Heir to the Force
by EJGryphon
Summary: Following the horrors of the Battle of Exogol, Rey struggles to cope with the loss of Ben Solo. EpX/Post-TRoS. MA in lattermost third.
1. Part 1: Chapter 1

Only after her next bite of food was cold did she realize that she was being rude. Her hosts had worked hard to cook a lovely family meal, and here she was, hardly even touching it.

"It's delicious, Malla," she managed, and it was. After a lifetime of decades-old, rehydrated Imperial rations, she hadn't realized how good real, homecooked food was, with tender bites of meat in a spiced gravy which the diners scooped up with hunks of soft, warm bread. The four of them sat on the floor of the family's treehouse, which the glow of the fireplace filled with warmth and danced across their faces. Far from the bright lights of Rwookrrorro, the home smelled sweet from the wroshyr wood and the night birds twittered softly outside. Earth-toned tapestries hung from every wooden wall, depicting – she imagined – the lives and legends of great heroes of their people. It was, in fact, probably the coziest place she had ever seen, and certainly the coziest place she'd ever been, radiating as it did the love of a family reunited after a long separation.

Her hostess gave a soft grunt.

"It's nothing," she replied quickly. "I'm all right."

But Rey Skywalker was not all right, and she could tell from the look that Chewbacca was giving her across the table that he knew it. He said nothing but turned the conversation to his son Lump, who was eager to describe what he'd been learning in school since he'd last seen his dad. Rey half-listened and tried to enjoy her dinner. _I'm reasonably certain I would not be convinced if I saw me either,_ she thought as she slowly chewed.

She was not surprised, then, when he interrupted her thoughts again as she sat on the back patio of their home a few hours later.

Chewie purred softly and handed her a wooden vessel full of she-didn't-know-what. She sipped it, trying to hide her hesitation: her Wookiee hosts were accustomed to much higher alcohol content than the drinks enjoyed by humans, and Rey had never been one to drink much anyway. There was too much risk involved in losing control of her faculties, even for a moment, and so she'd never developed the taste. Still, out of appreciation for the gesture, she drank. And, if she were being honest with herself, if there were ever a time when she wanted to lose control of her thoughts, it was now.

_I'm sad too, _he said, after a long while.

She fought back the tears that stung her eyes. "You have so much more to be sad about than I do. You knew them all for years and years."

He nodded slowly, and not unkindly. _Our people live long lives. We know we will mourn many friends._

There was a bit of silver in Chewie's fur, she could see in the firelight. Here among his own people, who would age at the same rate as he, he was in the prime of life. A war hero, a beloved leader, someone the others looked up to. Some humans might discount Wookiees for their furry countenances and quick tempers, thinking them to be more animal than sentient, but one thing Rey knew for sure was that the mighty Chewbacca was more than he seemed, and he was wise. Of that she was sure.

_We believe that those we love live on in the stars, _he continued, after a sip from his own drinking vessel. She let her eyes follow his gaze, through the trees to the night sky above. The stars were bright here; it reminded her of the view from her old home on Jakku – minus the canopy of trees, of course. How often she'd gazed longingly at the stars, dreaming of the day her family came back to get her and they'd live together again. Had she imagined a home like Chewie's, where kind parents lovingly raised their child in a peaceful oasis far from pain and war and deprivation? One where firelight chased away the evening cool, and they gathered to laugh together over supper, and a father tenderly comforted a brokenhearted child?

Perhaps, but it was not to be.

"Leia said that we could imagine the Jedi who have gone before us, speaking to us from the stars," Rey said.

_Do you believe that?_

"I'm not sure." She'd heard them, of course, calling to her on Exogol. As clearly as she heard Chewie speak to her now. But in the days following, the pain and grief that overtook her was overwhelming. The hideous flight back to Ajan Kloss, every muscle screaming in exhaustion and her head pounding, her heart shattered. She hadn't cried then. When she was sure that Finn was safe, she'd excused herself to her tent, zipped the door closed, and laid on her cot for two days. Tears would not come. She ate not a bite. Instead, she silently shut herself off from the Force and the pain that welled up inside her with each breath. She felt torn in half, a searing fire of guilt and sorrow. For one moment in her life, she'd been happy, truly happy; the next moment, it was over. And she was quite sure that she'd never know that feeling again.

And since that was true, there was no longer a need to know the Force.

On the third day, Chewbacca had torn open the tent. As gently as his huge frame would allow, he pushed her off her cot to the floor and roared.

She was eating a nutriment bar, she was taking a bath, and she was coming home with him to Kashyyk.

The journey was slow due to the constant changing of hyperspace routes. Chewie was afraid of being followed, and was unwilling to risk the safety of his family; only once he was satisfied that they'd lost any possibility of a tail did he set the Falcon's coordinates for his home planet. Even then, he'd landed in the planetary capital and insisted they walk to the exurban settlement where they lived.

"Are you sure you want to leave the Falcon here?" she asked. Kashyyk was a jungle planet, so green and beautiful that even its Trandoshan overloads, who patrolled menacingly outside the small spaceport Chewie had selected, could not mar her impression of it. No wonder Chewie had been so eager to return home. Grief weighed on him too, she knew, but he at least had a family to distract him from it.

At the end of the day, the Falcon was more Chewie's than hers so she deferred to his judgment. Rey sighed and picked up the small pack she'd brought with her from Ajan Kloss and gazed around herself at the freighter's small interior. Here she and Finn had worked together to fix what Plutt had broken within it; here she and Poe had met for the first time; here she'd sat when she first saw green; here she'd stood when they arrived at Ahch-To and everything changed all over again. Sorrow, the sorrow that pressed into her sharper than she could possibly articulate, stabbed her again as she imagined a little boy who might have played Dejarik at that very table – and she pushed the image away.

All told, it took about a standard day to reach the treehouse where Mallatobuck and Lumparawoo waited. They must have seen Chewie and Rey from some distance, because their cries of joy preceded them as ran through the trees to meet them. So many long, loving arms embraced them, and for an instant Rey felt her friend's happiness as her own. This too she pushed away and smiled politely at the kindly Wookiee family.

Now, hours later, she sat on his back patio. He'd built it himself, Malla had told Rey proudly when they'd given her a tour of the house. It overlooked a distant waterfall, and the light of the three moons glinted softly off the rippling water. Rey could not think of a more beautiful place.

"Chewie," she said, at last, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I need to tell you something."


	2. Chapter 2

She told the story, the horrible story, to the one being who knew what it meant, and she watched the anguish – the same anguish she carried – rise like a wall on which crashed the worst words she could imagine: "And then, he died."

The wail Chewbacca emitted was high-pitched and forlorn. It echoed off the trees and the water and the house, and he covered his face with his hands.

_My boy, _he moaned, _I used to put him on my shoulders … _

It would have been easy to forget that this mighty Wookiee who had shot Kylo Ren in horrified revenge had known and loved the child Ben Solo. His best friend's little boy, dark haired and quietly intense, who adored his daddy and slept little. An odd child, artistic and bookish yet so proud and, yes, beautiful. Of course Chewie had loved him, had carried the little one on his tall, broad shoulders, had told him a thousand times of his adventures with Han.

Rey realized she was clinging to Chewie's arm, and that, at last, tears rolled down her cheeks. Several moments passed; Malla peered through the window and disappeared again, leaving them to whatever new sorrow they shared. After a time, Chewbacca seemed to draw a deep breath and look down at her relatively tiny human form and wrapped her in his massive embrace. Rey nearly disappeared into his soft fur.

It felt good, to disappear.

Only Chewie knew the whole story. In the year since the day he'd helped her onto Ren's ship, she'd told no one, not even Finn, about the long conversations she'd had with Ben. About how she felt about him. No one else knew her secret. Not even Leia. In all the galaxy, it was only Chewie.

_Sweet girl, _he was saying. _I didn't know. I didn't know this is what you were carrying._

Naturally Chewie had assumed her grief was about Leia – and there was that too – but the searing knife in her soul was only the absence of its other half.

_I didn't know, _he repeated, now petting her hair while she wept. _I didn't know._

He held her for a long time, rocking her gently like a mother with a nursing infant. She felt the fur beneath her cheek grow wet and stick to her skin, and still she cried. Chewie murmured softly into her hair; she stopped listening to the words and tried to imagine what it might be like to be held by the one her heart loved … which made the sobbing worse, and she coughed and choked on her own tears.

She hid in Chewie's powerful arms for she didn't know how long. Until exhaustion at last took hold and she could cry no more. Until she felt herself being picked up and carried, like a baby, back inside the house. She kept her swollen eyes shut as her friend laid her on a pallet of blankets in the bedroom off the main house, gently pulled a worn quilt over her, and left her to sleep beside his own little boy.

_The most beautiful smile in the all galaxy. The way his cheeks crinkled up and how he gazed down at her. How his hair felt, soft and sweet, even as it was damp with sweat. His arms around her. Her hand in his, at last … at last … _

_And the leaving, the collapsing, the subsiding of consciousness. The ending of everything good in all the universe._

Rey sat up in the dark room and vomited.

_Mom! _Lump shouted, after a moment of realization hit him. _Something's wrong with Rey!_

But it was Chewie, not Malla, who reached her first. He instructed his son to get something to clean up the mess, and then knelt to inspect his little human. He touched her face, her shoulders, her hands, squawking softly and clucking all the way. But the wounds, they both knew, were not on the outside.

By now Malla was in the room too, mildly cleaning up after their guest. She shook her head, not in exasperation but with concern.

_Tomorrow we're taking her to see the rookaroo,_ she stated, matter-of-factly. Rey didn't know that last word; it was native Shyriiwook with no Basic equivalent she was familiar with. _Doctor_, perhaps. But surely there were no medical droids out here, far from the city on a planet far from the core. Malla didn't wait for a response from her husband but picked up her cleaning supplies and left the room. She grunted maternally at Lump, who obediently climbed back into his bed.

Chewie ran his big hand over her head one last time and cooed comfortingly. Too dazed to speak, Rey also laid down and tried to sleep.

When she woke again, it was already daylight. She wandered into the main room of the home from Lump's little bedroom to see Malla gently combing her son's damp back.

_Are you feeling better? _Lump asked with childlike cheer. Rey wondered what the human age equivalent was for the boy. Perhaps mid-teens? She knew he had endured a lot, had been enslaved by the Empire; he was also really just a kid, though, who loved his parents. He'd healed in the decades since his ordeal and the three of them seemed never to have missed a beat, no matter the separations they'd experienced.

A family, no matter what.

_There's breakfast by the fire, _Malla said. _You must be famished._

In fact, she was, having digested little of her supper. "Thank you," Rey managed. She helped herself as Malla finished grooming her son. She sat down cross-legged on the floor across from them and used the bread to sop up the warm, nourishing broth. Wookiee cuisine, Rey decided, was fantastic.

_There's still plenty of hot water for you to get cleaned up, _Malla continued. _This one needs to get to school so you can use the bedroom if you want. Leave me your garments and I'll wash them for you._

This was all very kind of course, but, "What will I wear?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

Malla paused. She hadn't considered this. Wookiees wore no clothing and little personal decoration, but they had luxurious fur to cover themselves, with unique patterns to distinguish themselves one from another. Rey had but one set of clothes. Poe had offered her some of Leia's things when she'd left, but the thought of wearing them was too much. Not only that but Leia's robes and gowns were the property of a princess of Alderaan, a great general of the Resistance, a Jedi; they were not fit for a nobody from Jakku, the heir of unrepentant evil, or the unworthy recipient of a life she could never repay.

After a moment, Malla said, _I have an idea._

Chewie came down the three stairs from the bedroom he shared with his wife. He greeted his family with a soft roar and crouched by the fire to pour himself a vessel of caff. He poured a second one and handed it to Rey. She'd never been much for caff either, but couldn't refuse her host's generosity. She took a sip; it was thick and bitter, from boiling the grains directly in the water rather than pouring it over the grains like what they made at the Resistance camp. The aftertaste, however, was sweet. Wookiee-style caff had a second ingredient, she realized, that counteracted the bitterness.

Lump hugged his parents and said goodbye to Rey before sliding down the rope to the ground. They were many stories up but the boy slid down fearlessly. A Force-user would jump down, Rey thought, unrestrained by rope or fear. When she left the treehouse, she'd use the rope.

Fed and caffeinated, Rey filled a pail with hot water and took it into the bedroom, pulling the curtain closed behind her. She undressed, folding her garments neatly for Malla to wash. Her body was free of blemish or any other damage; the healing gift she'd received had been quite thorough, at least physically. Not one bruise remained to remind her of that last, deadly battle, and she hated it.

She soaked a rag in the hot water and washed her skin. She saved her long hair for last, carefully unbinding it from the braid and turning her head upside-down to wash it directly in the pail. Every one of Leia's hairstyles had held a meaning, she was aware; Alderaanian culture had been rich with significance. One long braid down the back with the hair piled on top, intricately woven, signified mourning, and Leia had worn it often. Rey couldn't do that, so a single braid would have to do. Nothing could adequately express her grief, however, and there were no more Alderaanians to know what it meant.

As Rey finished, Malla leaned her head in and offered up a handful of tawny cloth. Rey unfolded it to see that it was a single, soft sheet, gently snipped and quickly stitched. A sash slid to the floor. She slipped the garment over her head and found the hasty armholes, and then wrapped the sash around her waist, pulling it tight to give the robe shape. It fell to her ankles, brushing the tops of her bare feet, and swooped gracefully over her shoulders. For having been a bedsheet just an hour previously, the dress was remarkably flattering, thanks to Malla's ingenuity.

When Rey emerged from the bedroom, Malla gave an approving growl and beckoned her over to comb her hair. Surprising herself, Rey gave in to the older being's gentle hands as they eased out the little tangles and worked in a bit of softly-scented oil. No wonder Lump had sat so still to be groomed. Finally, Malla carefully braided Rey's hair into a crown around her scalp and down her back, tying it off with a bit of kitchen twine. _Is this what it's like to have a mother? _

_Now, _Malla said, with kind firmness, _It's time for you two go see the rookaroo._

If you're enjoying my little story, please tell me what's working for you!


	3. Chapter 3

Chewie and Rey walked through the dense jungle of Kashyyyk, as the cool morning air slowly warmed around them. Their path was shady and damp, each step squishing slightly as she walked. He spoke little and only when it was necessary to guide her through the forest he knew so well. Some plants had long, dark vines that hung down into their way; others bore wide, heart-shaped leaves that turned upwards to capture the dew; still others boasted dense clumps of white flowers that showered them with sweet scent as they went. Rey could not resist touching some of them as she passed: a droopy leaf, almost black in color and slick with moisture; a curly vine covered in tiny hairs that gave it a fuzzy feeling, like the silky fur of a Wookiee. Tiny lizards hid behind the foliage and small, hairy mammals scampered along the ground to get out of their way. Birds cooed and squawked unseen above them.

_So much life_, Rey thought. On Jakku, every drop of water was sacred, yet here it flowed and dripped wastefully into the forest floor. On Jakku, life struggled to enter the world, yet here it burst prodigally in riots of color and sensation. She enjoyed the rich, profound beauty of Chewie's homeworld even as she pressed down the intrusive upswelling of the Force within her.

_No, _she repeated internally.

In time they reached the foot of a great treehouse, much larger than Chewie's family home. The support beams that touched the forest floor were wide and extended deep into the soil; they were also covered in a thin whitewash that made them stand out against the deep greens of the forest. High, high above them, much further up than any Wookiee dwelling she had seen, the platform that formed the treehouse's floor was barely visible behind the dense foliage.

"Is this it, the rookaroo?" she asked, feeling awed. She tried to say the word properly, as she still wasn't sure what it meant in Basic. Rey's Shyriiwook was abominable.

_Rookaroo, _Chewie corrected, gently. _Yes._

A heavy rope ladder dangled on the other side of the platform. He gestured for her to go first so that he could be there to catch her if she stumbled. Rey took hold of the ladder and began to climb; in truth it was little different from her previous occupation, climbing the precarious ladder into the unknown, seeking a treasure that may or may not exist above her, carefully and intentionally not looking down.

Rey popped her head up over the floorboards of the treehouse, and realized that it was enormous. Long planks of wroshyr, sanded down to supple softness by many Wookiee feet, formed the floor, and the ceiling was a thatched dome with an eye at that top through which the white smoke of the fire escaped. The walls were hung with tapestries woven of the most vibrant colors, making the whole space look like a sacred grove from the forest below. And it was absolutely full of Wookiees, male and female, of every age and color and size. As Rey climbed slowly into the room, the cacophony of growls and chuffs stopped and all eyes turned to her.

Up behind her came Chewbacca, and the sound started up again, this time with calls of _Chewbacca! Chewbacca the mighty! The mighty warrior is home!_ She couldn't help but be proud of her friend, and relieved that he was here to vouch for her presence among the suspicious Wookiees.

_Greetings to you, mighty one, _said a voice over all the others, and Rey lifted her head to see a female Wookiee seated in a wicker chair. She was the largest Wookiee Rey had ever seen; her fur was pure white, and twisted into it all around her head were shells and beads and teeth of predators. Around her neck hung a slender leather thong from which dangled a large amber amulet.

She was staring straight at Rey.

The others all fell silent at the sound of her voice. She gestured at one of the others and someone brought drinking vessels for both Rey and Chewie: more strong drink. Wookiee hospitality.

_My young friend is sick, _Chewie explained. _We thought you would be able to heal her._

Rey knew then that this was the Rookaroo. The ancient Wookiee rose from her chair and moved with remarkable smoothness toward them, never taking her eyes off Rey. As she approached, Rey could see that she was at least a head taller than Chewie. The various ornaments she wore in her fur had obvious significance, as they were painstakingly tied into the matted coils that locked them in. Perhaps she had been a warrior herself; certainly she knew how to be intimidating.

_Lie down, _she said at last, _and I'd see what I can do._

Chewie gestured that Rey was to finish her beverage, and she did, swallowing as much as she could in one sip, then handing the vessel to her friend. The Wookiees parted and made a space on the floor beside what was clearly a ceremonial fire, coals smoldering and giving off smoke rather than heat. Rey knelt down and then laid out on her back, feeling deeply vulnerable. The Rookaroo knelt on the floor beside Rey's supine body and with her two broad hands began scooping the smoke from its column above the coals and directing it over Rey. She chanted softly in Shyriiwook as she went, shaking her flattened palms over various points like Rey's hands and temples.

The others began supporting her efforts with a kind of pulsing, humming sound. Rey glanced up at Chewie, seeking reassurance, and saw that he was also participating in the sound. The alcohol was catching up to her somewhat. She felt strange. The Rookaroo's ornaments jangled softly underneath the disorienting overlay of sound and smoke. The room seemed to be spinning.

_There is nothing to be done, _the Rookaroo pronounced, after who knew how long. She sat back on her heels and the humming stopped. Rey blinked, not sure she'd understood correctly.

_You cannot heal her heartbreak? _Chewie asked, in a gentle, low moan. Rey realized completely then that she was not here to cure her upset stomach.

_Oh, _the Rookaroo said. _I can heal the broken heart, and I can stir up its passions. I can bring forgetfulness of sorrow and I can create everlasting memory. But all of this can be done by anyone willing to learn about the plants of our forest._

Rey sat up and looked around the room, at the Wookiees gazing down at her. She had plenty of everlasting memory, and the part about forgetting made her stomach lurch anew.

The Rookaroo went on. _I cannot cure **this** child. Not as long as she has cut herself off from the Way of Life._

Chewbacca let out a long moan and covered his ears with his hands. He had not realized what Rey had done. Of course, the Rookaroo could only know if she herself were …

… a Force-sensitive Wookiee shaman. Rey sighed; of course that was exactly what she was, and Rey had not seen it because she had closed herself off.

Which also meant that her attempts were successful.


	4. Chapter 4

The way back to Chewie and Malla's was both shorter and longer than the way to the Rookaroo's. They took the same path through the woods, a path that Chewie clearly knew well, but the old shaman's words weighed heavily on her. She'd given her a small packet of herbs to make into a tea for her stomach, though they both knew that her stomach was not the problem. Even her decision to sever herself from the Force was not the problem, though the Rookaroo had said that it prevented her from offering healing. No, the problem with much deeper, a wound that simply was not going to heal.

When at last they reached the treehouse, and Rey climbed the soft woven ladder, she felt infinitely tired. She settled herself on the floor near the fire, cross legged, at once deep in thought and thinking nothing.

Chewie gave a soft rumble and handed her a drink. Malla appeared from the upstairs, took a look at the two of them, inside. _Well? _she asked. _She didn't give you anything?_

Before Rey could give a reassuring response, Chewie grumbled something non-committal in their native tongue. Rey chose not to interpret it in her mind, and sat staring at the beverage in her hands.

_Well you can't just sit here, _Malla said._ Your son will be home soon; You should do something with him. He's missed you._

_I know it, _her husband replied. _I've missed you both._ They shared a look which Rey tried to pretend she had not seen out of respect for their privacy.

As if on cue, the rope ladder twitched and Lump climbed up over and onto the platform of the floor. He greeted his parents cheerfully and their guest too, and settled himself on the floor while his mother found him a snack. Kind, attentive Malla. Her love for her family lifted Rey's heart, if only a little. Malla gave Rey and Chewie a bit to eat as well, a dark brown ball the size of her palm, slightly sticky but not unpleasant. It seemed to be a fruit paste rich with seeds and nuts, rolled into a ball for ease of eating. Rey absently wiped her hand on the lap of her dress, glad Malla didn't see her indiscretion with the simple garment.

_Son, how would you like to go to the tavern with your old man tonight? _Chewie asked. The boy's eyes lit up.

_That sounds amazing! _Lump almost shouted. _Is Rey coming?_

_Chewbacca! Lumpawaroo hasn't yet had his Gerferrr._

More foreign words. Rey realized that, though they spoke Basic for her sake, they must typically speak Shyriiwook at home. Chewie never used borrowed words around her while working for the Resistance, but either culturally-specific concepts never came up, or he made a conscious effort to restrict himself to include everyone in the conversation. It must have been hard enough to be unable to form the sounds well enough for everyone to understand him; no need to complicate it with untranslatable concepts he'd need to explain more deeply.

Then again, Rey was suddenly very aware that she knew painfully little about her friend's native homeworld and culture. He rarely spoke about himself - but she'd never asked.

_Mom, _Lump whined._ I've had my seventy-fifth name day. We just agreed I'd wait to make it official until Dad was home._

A coming-of-age ceremony, then. Many cultures had them, she knew: even the Teedo, the native species of her own homeworld, Jakku, celebrated the introduction of their children into society with feasts that lasted several days and nights. They were a nomadic people, which seemed to make the gathering of an entire distant clan all the more precious. Often, Teedo headmen had come into Niima Outpost to trade goods for food to feed the guests at one of their children's ceremonies. She'd never heard of a Teedo wedding, but a Teedo coming-of-age party could be heard for miles around in the bare desert.

Malla half-snorted, half-laughed. _Well you could hardly have it without him._

_Come on, Malla. He's legal age to enter the tavern._

She frowned and eyed her husband and son, already knowing she'd been beat.

_You're going with them? _she asked Rey.

"I – I think so. Yes?" Rey had almost forgotten she was there with them, as she watched their little family negotiate the maturity of its only child.

Malla harrumphed. She didn't entirely approve of this outing, and she clearly thought Rey was not yet well enough to enjoy Wookiee nightlife. She turned to Lump.

_Do not get drunk, _she said, with a waggle of her finger. _And you take care of her like she's your sister. _

Chewie barked in laughter. _Rey does **not **need anyone to take care of her._

That much was true, as far as Rey was concerned, but it was nice to be someone worth protecting.

The Wookiee tavern was a short walk in the opposite direction from the Rookaroo's treehouse. When she climbed to the top of the ladder behind Lump and Chewie, she realized that it was not in fact a single treehouse but rather several, connected together by a wooden catwalk in the forest canopy. It was far different from Rwookrrorro, the capital city of Kashyyyk, where they'd arrived just yesterday, but up here, with a collection of Wookiees coming and going, it seemed much more civilized than Niima Outpost ever had. She followed them into the tavern, wondering what went on in the other huts. Perhaps there was a trading post, or a shop, or some other spot to pass the time. Rey hoped she'd get the chance to see inside them all in time.

_No weapons, _Chewie murmured, as he laid his own bowcaster against the wall outside the door. She'd nearly forgotten that she'd slung her staff over her shoulders when they'd headed out into the night.

Chewie parted the grass curtain that covered the door to the tavern, keeping its light and music inside, and Rey and Lump passed ahead of him into the hut. It was about as big around as the Rookaroo's treehouse, but the thatched roof was nowhere near as high. An eye at the top let in the moonlight, but there was no need for a fire here as long as the place teemed with warm bodies and jovial spirits. Soft lanterns hung on the walls at regular intervals, burning real flame instead of the electronic glow of a spaceship. No tapestries hung here, but the wattle-and-daub walls were rubbed as smooth as glass and decorated with frescoes depicting she didn't know what. It smelled of the sweet wroshyr wood, and of fur, and of beer, and of smoke.

Rey noticed one or two of the Wookiees she'd seen earlier, but it seemed that this was mostly a different crowd than those who hung out at the religious center. Still, as before, when Chewbacca arrived, everyone greeted him with shouts and hearty claps on the back. After their lovely, peaceful supper and walk through the silent woods to arrive here, the room seemed especially loud – but cheerfully loud, the welcome trumpet for a returning hero. Lump took her elbow and guided her away from the crowd that formed around her father and up to the bar.

_Don't tell my mom, _he said with a wink, as he ordered for them both in Shyriiwook. She accepted her vessel – she was getting used to that now – and they moved along the wall and toward the back. Chewie would find them when the enthusiasm died down a bit; for now, she and Lump stood together and took in the room.

Her eye was drawn to the only other non-Wookiee there, a tall male Twi'lek scanning the crowd suspiciously and smoking a hookah. His skin was an opaque aquamarine, with large lekku tossed around his neck like a scarf. When he paused to take a breath, she could see his teeth were filed sharp to points, the traditional way. Like most male Twi'leks, to human eyes, he was hideous.

And she had caught his attention. His lekku twitched, forming a greeting, and Rey nodded back, ever so slightly, hoping that they could keep the interaction at that, a simple acknowledgement of the other.

But the Twi'lek clearly wanted more attention: he beckoned her over with his free hand. Rey elbowed Lump and jerked her head at the Twi'lek, asking her friend what they should do.

_I don't know, _Lump said, unhelpfully. _Let's go talk to him, I guess?_

That was the opposite of what she'd hoped for, but there was really no way to get out of it. She wished she had her staff, and was glad that she did at least have a Wookiee.

"Greetings, child," the Twi'lek oozed. "It's good to a sentient being with a little less … hair." He gestured broadly at the rest of the room, and then looked Lump up and down. Lump wasn't yet as tall as his father, nor as broad, but he was larger and heavier than this Twi'lek, and certainly stronger.

Rey didn't speak but only met his gaze.

"What brings such a pretty thing all the way out here?"

_She's here with me, _Lump asserted, his fur lifting slightly.

"Ahh," the Twi'lek purred, reassessing the situation. Then he looked at Lump and ignored Rey. "Is she for sale then?"

It was, oddly, not meant as an insult. It was a real inquiry. Rey wrinkled her nose and stood a bit taller.

"No, I am not for sale. I'm here with my friends. Look: you called us over here. Did you need something?"

The Twi'lek shifted again in his chair, unoffended. She had to give credit where credit was due: they were a canny species, always open-minded about how to turn a situation to their own best interest.

"Just looking to meet some new friends," he said, his oily voice and thick accent making his words sound almost musical. "What brings you to this quiet bit of country?"

She considered not answering the question, but Lump answered for her. _I live here. I am Lumpawaroo, son of Chewbacca, son of Attichitcuk._

"The mighty Chewbacca," the Twi'lek said, his eyes flicking over to where Chewie was drinking with his friends. "And you?"

"I'm Rey, daughter of …" She paused for an instant; it was tempting to answer with the truth, if only to gain a bit of ground over this pushy creature, but a half-truth would have to do. "Daughter of darkness."

He took her obfuscating in stride. "A powerful ancestor indeed." The corners of his lips curled ever so slightly. "I am Jace To Abbo. I work for the mining company."

_The Trandoshans, _Lump spat, with obvious disgust.

Jace shrugged. "They pay in New Republic credits, and those still spend. Who am I to care what species pays me?"

At last, Chewie caught sight of his son and his young friend, and ushered them away from the Twi'lek in the corner.

"I hope to see you again, Rey and Lumpawaroo," he said, through a final puff on his hookah.

_You should watch out for him,_ Lump said, softly, as they walked home in the still night air. Chewie led them through the darkened forest, lifting branches over their heads and pointing out dips in the path.

"Watch out?" she repeated.

He shrugged and gestured back over his shoulder, toward the tavern behind them. _Jace. He … I think he wants you._

For a moment she wasn't sure what her friend was suggesting; as the realization dawned, she scrunched up her nose and stopped walking. Lump too stopped and turned around to look at her.

"Like," she stumbled, "like, he _wants_ me?"

Several competing thoughts crashed together in her mind. Even Finn had expressed interest when they'd first met, which she'd been quick to put down. She had, of course, slapped away more than a few over-friendly hands in her life, especially on Jakku when the life of a scavenger was worth less a bowl of bread. Some of the other girls were more obliging, giving access to their bodies in exchange for a few extra portions; others held out _hope _of access as a way to get off-world with one of the traders who passed through; still others had been taken by force and thereafter simply stopped fighting. After a childhood full of the eager hands and eyes of Unkar Plutt, Rey would rather be hungry or dead.

So Rey had never considered a man, ever, save one – and a large, blue-green Twi'lek with a mouth full of sharpened teeth was certainly not much competition for _him_. She shook her head, as if warding off Jace's advances in her mind. "Kriff," she finally settled on. Lump was right.

_Yeah,_ he agreed. He didn't move to resume walking, studying her face.

"Well I'm not interested."

_Obviously, _Lump grunted, rolling his eyes. _He's twice your age._

It was such an absurd point for Lump to strike on that Rey nearly laughed, appreciating the innocence of her friend who, at seventy-five, was in fact almost certainly older than Jace. She imagined him about sixteen in human years, with a patchy beard he insisted made him look older but actually made him look ridiculous. And, despite all the times she'd hardened herself against new friends, she decided to let him in.

"Actually," she said, growing serious, "I wouldn't anyway. I'm … I love someone else."

Lump likewise let the smile drop from his face. _I know, _he said, softly again. _Mom told me about Ben._

Ben. The word, that one little name, crackled in her mind and stung as if she'd been slapped. _Ben_.

Chewie must have told Malla about Han and Luke and Leia, and how could he leave out the fall of little Ben Solo, the child he loved? And Malla had told her own boy to be gentle with their new friend, who for want of him was broken beyond hope of repair. She was irritated with Malla for sharing the information, but also glad she did not need to tell again the story.

"I love him," Rey repeated, and as she did so, she realized that she had never spoken those words out loud. "I'll always love him."

Lump was silent for a long time, looking down at her. _My mom - _he began.

"I don't want to talk to Malla about it," Rey interrupted, with greater sharpness than she meant.

_No, that's not what I mean. Whenever my dad is gone, my mom cries. She doesn't think I can hear her, but I can. _He paused, thinking about his words. _It's okay to miss someone you love when you can't be with them._

But Chewie always came home from his adventures. "But Ben's … _gone_."

Lump shrugged. It wasn't dismissive, but sad and unsure. They stood together under the moonlight for a long time. Rey felt the tears pricking her eyes again, and then one streaked down her cheek. She struck at it immediately with the back of her hand. Up ahead, Chewie had realized that the kids were no longer following him and gave a concerned roar.

"So what do I do about Jace?"

_I don't know, _Lump said, laying his huge, fuzzy hand on her shoulder. _But it's a good thing your brother's a Wookiee._


	5. Chapter 5

After breakfast and washing up, Rey went for quiet walks in the woods. On Ajan Kloss, she'd practiced Jedi training in the forest and meditated silently on the nature of the Force while surrounded by its teeming life. On Kashyyyk, she just wandered, climbing trees and swimming in pools just for the sake of working her muscles and keeping them taut, but she actively resisted any real training. To meditate on the Force was, ultimately, to meditate on what she had lost, to wallow in the silence that hung like black curtains in the place where once had been the quiet, humming presence of Ben Solo. Only when the hum was silent, now, did she realize that it had always been there and she'd never noticed it because of its very constancy. To feel, really feel, the power of the Force was to acknowledge that yawning absence; since there could never be consummation there, it was foolish to torture herself with it.

She tried to be home for lunch each day; by midday she'd be hungry and Malla's food was almost magical. But one afternoon Rey climbed the rope ladder to the house and looked inside to find her hosts embracing in the main room. She dropped her head down, listening to know if they'd seen her; they were speaking quietly to one another, speaking Skyriiwook but so softly and intimately that it was clear they were speaking only to one another, and then Rey heard their soft, furry feet move toward the back of the house where the steps led upstairs. Rey blushed furiously and slid swiftly down the sides of rope ladder to the soft ground below. After that, she tried to time her return to the house to match Lump's, sometimes waiting on the forest floor below the treehouse for him to come back from school.

About two weeks after Rey's arrival on Kashyyyk, she did just that, seated on a boulder not far from the house. Not that long ago, there had always been more work to do than time to do it in; now, somehow, she had time to sit and watch multi-legged insects crawl along in a perfectly straight line, single-file, like good little soldiers on a march. When they went from left to right, they had nothing on their backs, but when they returned traveling right to left, they had carefully-shaped pieces of leaves on their backs. She imagined them carrying the harvest back to their lair under the bushes, where the soil was always damp and protected from the various creatures who would have loved to lick up a neat line of snacks.

Knowing the human need for clothing, lacking fur as humans do, Malla had crafted a handsome little wardrobe of three dresses for Rey using scrap cloth from the house. Today, Rey wore a soft tunic the color of her hair; it hung to her knees, with hip-high slits in the skirt for ease of walking. The neckline was square and decorated with off-white embroidery, which one would only know had been part of the bedsheet if one had known the bedsheet in question. Under the tunic, she wore cream-colored hose that protected her legs from the biting of insects and the slapping of leaves, and soft leather boots that had been Lump's when he was very, very young. Her hair was plaited into two braids, one at either side of her head; the plaits were mostly twisted up against her head, but a length still hung down to her shoulders, and these were decorated with burnt-orange ribbons. It was more ornamentation than Rey had ever worn before, ever, but it had all made Malla so happy that she couldn't refuse.

The day Malla had given her the two dresses to go with the much simpler one she'd pulled together that first morning, Malla had also given her back the clothes she'd come in, the bright white vest and trousers and wrap, clean and mended back to almost the same condition as when Rey'd first received them. But Rey had thanked her hostess and carefully folded the garments into neat squares and placed them lovingly in the bottom on her small sack, right on top of the Jedi texts she couldn't even touch anymore. The memory those garments carried was at once so sweet and so bitter that she could only close up the bag and slide it back into the corner of Lump's room where it sat, untouched, since she'd arrived.

Lump finally came home, cheerful as always, and surprised her as she sat studying the line of insects.

_Hey, Rey, _he said, slowly, eyeing her. _Really liking those scatterbugs, huh?_

"Hey!" she said, with obvious pleasure at the sight of him. She scrambled to her feet. There was something about the young Wookiee that Rey just found comforting, like an old friend she didn't need to explain much to. He'd had some tough times and real hardships, but, like her, gentle optimism was the name of his game. Or at least, his optimism reminded her to _try_ to be optimistic, and that itself was a comfort.

"Want to go down to the river with me?" she asked. There was a flat spot beside the stream the treehouse looked down onto, at the base of the waterfall, where the two of them had gone fishing the week before. To be more accurate, Lump had caught several fish, with his bear hands, while Rey splashed helplessly at the fish that swam, totally unconcerned, past her.

_I'm so hungry, _he protested. Like a human teenager, his appetite was vast.

Smiling, Rey produced from her pocket two of Malla's shi-shok fruit balls wrapped in oiled burlap, leftovers from the lunch she'd taken with her when she'd left that morning. She handed them both over to Lump, who gazed at them eagerly, and she knew he'd agree to keep her company.

_I have a better idea than the river, _he said, as he took a bite. _Follow me._

Indeed, Lump's idea_ was _better than another unsuccessful fishing expedition. They wandered out past what the Wookiees called "town" and toward the Trandoshan mines. Under the wroshyr trees were deposits of minerals that purified fuel for spaceships, and the Trandoshans entered the caverns where the Wookiees refused to go and dug up the soft fingers of ore from the walls and ceilings and floors, and brought it up in cartloads. From their spot on a hill, concealed in the edge of the forest, Rey and Lump could see the carts, filled and packed high with dark, shimmering crumbles, coming up in a line from inside the planet. The truth was that Kashyyyk was rich with resources; in the past, Wookiees had been enslaved and forced to do this work, and their incredible strength and endurance had allowed the forests and the fields to be plucked bare. Various uprisings and the aid of the Jedi had ended the worst of the abuses, and under the New Republic Kashyyyk had bounced back from overuse. The Trandoshans had stayed on as overlords here, but restricted themselves to the couple of cities on the planet and to minimally-invasive mining. They used only paid employees, not slaves, and as a result only their own people tended to work for them, the Wookiees preferring to keep their traditional ways in the jungle. The cold efficiency of Trandoshan mining manifested in smooth operation and little mingling of Trandoshans and Wookiees, though the Wookiees thought little of the Trandoshans and the Trandoshans thought likewise of Wookiees. It was a cool détente, but no one died anymore; even Chewie could complain little about the arrangement.

_I've scheduled my gerferrr, _Lump said, as they watched the line moving like scatterbugs on a rock. _Six days from now._

Rey smiled up at him. She still wasn't quite sure what exactly that entailed, but his voice was glad, so she was glad for him. "I'll look forward to it."

"Hello again, little children," said a smooth voice behind them. Rey and Lump turned around from watching the action below them to see that it was the Twi'lek. He looked Rey over, at her soft brown dress and the ribbons in her hair, and said, "Hmph. She's a lady after all, eh?"

Rey strongly considered reaching for her quarterstaff but decided it would make little difference for her and probably some trouble for Chewie if she beat the Twi'lek up, here on the edge of Trandoshan mining land.

"Here for the view?" he asked, stepping past them to look down the hill at the mine. He was wearing a silky robe the color of richest soil, embroidered with golden thread all throughout it. Large sleeves puffed above his wrists; the robe hung elegantly and extravagantly over him to mid-calf, where very fine leather boots, stamped with a pretty vine pattern, covered his feet. A jacket of black leather was loosely laced in the front to hold it together without spoiling the effect of the robe. His head was bare, as male Twi'leks' always were, but his lekku twined around his throat, more like decorations than part of his body.

_We're not trespassing, _Lump growled, irritated at Jace's mere presence.

"Of course not," he replied, smoothly, not looking back at him. "It is impressive, the way they manage their work. I can see why you'd want a look."

"Why are _you_ here?" Rey asked. They weren't really on a road, so it was unlikely he'd just been passing by.

"I saw you and I wondered if I could help you, my friends." It sounded insincere, but really there was no other, more likely response. Jace was now looking back at Rey, again examining her, approvingly. His gaze made her skin crawl a little, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. He was just a bit of a creepy guy.

_Thank you, but we don't need any help, _Lump said, putting his hand on Rey's shoulder and giving her a gentle push to leave.

"Then perhaps I can offer you an even more interesting view?" he murmured, speaking more quietly so that Rey and Lump had to be silent to hear him speaking. "Something more … titillating?"

Okay, he was more than a _bit_ creepy, but that was intriguing.

Lump sighed beside her. He, too, was reluctantly interested.

"Fine, Twi'lek. Show us," Rey muttered, and Lump vocalized his agreement.

"Call me Jace," the Twi'lek replied. "I insist." And he beckoned them follow with a wave of his hand.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey and Lump followed Jace down the hillside, away from the way they had come but not directly toward the mine. When Jace turned and ducked back into the forest, expecting them to follow, Rey wished she had a blaster. Either she or Lump could surely take the Twi'lek, but if he had friends lurking in the woods, there was only so much they could do. Still, they followed him, moving in silence. It felt like they walked a long time, especially since none of them tried to make conversation, but she knew it was only perhaps half an hour. They were in a part of the forest she hadn't been to before, much further from the treehouse where she lived with Chewie's family, than she had been before, but she had a very clear idea of where they had come from and how to get back if she had to. At last, Jace moved them out of the woods and into a clearing.

"There. You see?" He swept his hand over to the right of them, and on the other side of the trees there Rey could see there was a building. "Come."

She had a bad feeling about all this, but, she supposed, she was pretty far into it now. She and Lump exchanged a glance trying to reassure each other, before they caught up to Jace and peered through the branches.

Fair in front of them, down the hill a bit, was a large transport vehicle. Into it, three Trandoshan men were shoving small Trandoshan children.

The children barely came up to the adults' knees, but it was impossible for Rey to say how old they could be. Their scaly reptilian skin made a few changes as the creatures aged, making the youngest of their species look nearly like miniatures of the adults. These were very small, some of them barely walking, but that really meant nothing to her. The three adult males used long sticks like shepherds' crooks to guide the younglings into the transport. They weren't intentionally brutal, but they weren't gentle either.

_What are we looking at? _Lump asked after several moments of staring.

The Twi'lek didn't answer for minute, and then said, "The next generation of workers."

Dozens of tiny reptilian children being crowded onto a transport, headed for stars-know-where.

Rey thought for a moment about Malla, who so lovingly combed and fed and clothed and fussed over the children in her care. She thought about her own mother, who, Rey now knew, had died to keep her secret and safe. And she thought about Leia, who would have crawled over broken glass if she thought it would bring her boy home to her. "Where are their mothers?"

Jace didn't answer at first. "Their mothers bring them here."

_They just hand them over for this?_ Lump asked, horrified. No doubt he was thinking of Malla too.

"Where are these mothers?" Rey demanded, turning to look at Jace with fire in her eyes. "Don't the women _care_ at least?"

The Twi'lek put out his hands, palms up, and spread them out, as if to show that they were empty. "Women cry."

One adult, reddish-brown and tall, picked up a reluctant child and tossed it into the transport. It squawked when it landed too hard on the metal floor of the transport, and then sat crying softly to itself. No one was coming to comfort it. She felt a tingle in her fingers, like rubbing cloth on a too-dry day, and pictured how the Trandoshan would scream when she touched him with lightning. And then she was horrified with herself, and pressed down the desire and the hate and the Force.

After several moments, he said, "The children will be raised collectively and trained for the hunt. Some may return to Kashyyyk and the mines; most will be sent out to work for others. In a few years, they won't remember any of this at all."

Rey shook her head in frustration. All these little children, handed over by their parents to be taken away to Trandosha to train to serve the collective … It sounded very much like what had been done to generations of Jedi, she realized – and stormtroopers too. All of that. It had been a cruel thing to do to Finn, and cruel to every Force-sensitive child carried away to Coruscant, and it was cruel to do to these children.

"We should do something," Rey said, and she looked over her shoulder to Lump for confirmation.

There was resolve in his eyes, yes, and anger, but he said, _Let them go._

"But we should go save those kids. They're crying -"

_Krong the Trandoshans, _Lump spat out in a sharp bark that made Rey turn her eyes back to the guards to see if they'd heard him. _They turned Kashyyyk into poodoo like they own it. _

"Ah," Jace said, sucking in his breath between his sharpened teeth, as if he were very deeply meditation on Lump's words. "Yes, they have not always been kind to your people."

Rey studied the Twi'lek's face, trying to figure out what he was driving at. The Trandoshans finished loading the transport and shut the door on the children with a loud _clang_. Jace met her gaze.

"But these children cannot be helped. They'll be offworld before you even get to Rwookrrorro. But …"

Jace trailed off, gesturing obsequiously as if he were just a servant offering his thoughts to a lord. His eyes on Rey suggested he was hoping she'd ask for more. She decided to bite.

"But what?"

"But there are others," he whispered, his voice almost a hiss. "Children not yet taken, whose mothers still cling to hope."

Rey did not need the Force to feel Lump's fury beside her. _Who cares? _he seethed.

Jace shrugged, as if to say, _Not I,_ but turned to look expectantly at Rey all the same.

"Why do you care so much?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "Why are you telling us this?"

Jace To Abbo straightened, as if offended. "My reasons are my own," he snapped.

Rey didn't trust him and she didn't like him, and now she pulled at Lump's elbow to leave. Jace didn't move to stop them, but only watched them as they retraced their path away from the clearing and back into town and home.

That night, as Rey and Lump lay in their bedroom, she thought about what Jace had said to them. That there were other children that she could help. It made her sad and it made her angry, and she already had so much to be sad and angry over. She needed something else to think about.

"So tell me, what is a _geferrr_?" She asked, into the dark bedroom. She could hear his breathing, and knew he was still awake, just like her. He answered slowly, thoughtfully, trying to think through how to explain it.

_Well, mostly it's a chance to honor those who made the way for you. I mean, your parents. And you think them everything that they did for you, to make you who you are. And then after that, you're considered an adult._

She thought about that for a long while. She thought again about the Teedo coming-of-age rituals that she had heard in the desert but never seen, and about the Jedi path that Luke had told her about and Leia had tried to teach her. A hundred years ago, by her age, if she'd been raised in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, she'd probably be a Jedi Knight by now. An adult in the tradition.

"What does that mean for you?"

_Mostly_, he said after another moment's thought, _it means you can vote in the awdeska_. And then, as if suddenly remembered she wasn't a Wookie, he said, _that's our governing body. Just a local one at first, but after you're one hundred you can be elected to go to the regional body._

Then he was quiet for a few minutes, and Rey thought about that. Should only really known one way of governing anything, which was the military organization of the alliance. Leia was of course in charge, but there were so many upon whom she depended for advice. It wasn't a voting body exactly, but their opinions have mattered. The opinions of people like Poe, who were imperfect and flawed, but had wisdom and experiences that were not like hers and so could offer different perspectives. And even when Leia went a different way, it was always informed by the group.

Growing up on Jakku, by contrast, there was only the governance of might. Unkar Plutt had control of the food in Niima Outpost, so he made the rules. He'd give more food if you did a better job for him - if he wanted to - or more food if you performed extra services. Rey didn't want to think about that. A governing body, where the members voted, seemed like a good idea.

Then Lump said, very softly, as if he hoped she was already asleep and wouldn't hear him, _it also means that you are allowed to garaweh, which I guess maybe in Basic is called courting?_

And the way he said it, so softly, with just an edge of hope, Rey wondered if he already had a girl in mind.

And that felt strange in her chest. To think of Lump as a man, pursuing a woman. And then she thought about Chewie and Malla, making love in the afternoon in their treehouse while the children were outside. And then she thought about kissing Ben Solo and that made her feel strangely warm and maybe a little happy, and she held onto that memory and fell asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

"Courting" was a funny word for it, Rey thought as she absently chewed her breakfast. Everything Malla made was delicious, and it was warm and perfectly seasoned. Rey hadn't really ever eaten a warm meal until she'd known the Resistance; wood for a fire simply didn't exist in the sands of Jakku, even if she'd been able to bring herself to kill one of the small animals that skittered across them. Chewie had cooked for her on many occasions, having a special affinity for roasted meat, but even his food – which she had once thought to be excellent – paled in comparison with his wife's.

And Malla gave it to her so willingly, so easily, as if handing over food were just … nothing. Rey had had many street fights over food, had beaten many other children bloody to protect what was hers. She never stole, never, but she wouldn't be stolen from. And here, in Malla's little kitchen, her friends simply gave her food to eat and clothes to wear and a warm place by the fire and love.

Which was easy to do, Rey realized, when they had so much food and warmth and love, more than they needed. This home was what she had always wanted for herself, even when she didn't know such a thing existed in all the galaxy: full of love, being expressed and given so easily because there was always more to give.

Malla gently stroked her husband's head as he ate. This was standard among Wookiees, Rey had come to understand: the standard, expected behavior between friends and family members. Lots of touching, even grooming, the working out of tangles and of conflicts between them at the same time. Rey's hair was much longer than any Wookiee's fur, and Malla was kind to keep it up in braids for her, so the Wookiees tended not to pet her as much as they petted each other, but she had had to accept the constant possibility of a furry hand stroking her shoulder – she supposed clothing was enough like fur as to be a plausible substitute – whenever someone was close enough to her.

"How did you two meet?" she asked, suddenly. Lump looked up at his parents and chuffed his encouragement for them to tell the story. Malla and Chewie looked at each other.

_We grew up together, _she said fondly, after a moment. Chewie gave a soft sound, enjoying the telling. _I loved him since I was little. There was never anyone else for me._

He titled his head back into her hand for just an instant, then looked at Rey. _Wookiees are different from humans, Rey,_ he said, very quietly, and she knew what he was trying to say without saying it. Her bread felt suddenly very hard to swallow, caught in her throat, though no one else seemed to notice.

They were all silent for several moments, listening to the crackle of the low fire. The temperature in this part of Kashyyyk seemed to stay about the same day after day, cooling somewhat after the sun went down but rising again to be comfortable for walking in the forest without breaking a sweat. They didn't need a roaring fire, but just enough for cooking or heating water for bathing and then keeping hot foods hot until they were all eaten up. Malla had laid tubers in the coals for supper that night, but she'd also set up an extra pot of porridge on the stand over the fire.

Lump placed his empty bowl next to the wash basin and ran his hands over his arms to smooth out his fur. _Gotta go,_ he said, and he rubbed his head against his mother's and father's and Rey's and left for school, climbing down the rope ladder to the forest floor, and silently treading away from the treehouse, as Wookiees could.

_Do you have plans for today? _Malla asked her, as she began to clean up from breakfast. Chewie took Rey's bowl and handed it to her, and then set to fluffing the cushions on the floor and banking the little fire. Malla knew quite well that Rey couldn't have any plans; she knew no one on all of Kashyyk except the three of them and one very strange Twi'lek.

"No?" Rey said, unsure of where Malla was heading.

_I'm going to visit a sick friend, _she replied. _Bring her some porridge. Do you want to come with me?_

As surely as Malla must have known Rey had no other friends, she must have known she had nowhere to be. "Of course," Rey said. She was already dressed, wearing the simple tawny dress Malla had put together for her that first morning, and she slid on Lump's old boots over the socks Malla had knit to warm her baby boy some seventy years ago. It still made Rey smile to think that she was tall for a human female yet fit into garments made for their babies.

The two of them walked down the path toward town, but veered off between two trees. Rey had found and memorized the way she took most days, the long walk she took, stopping off to climb a tree or whatever interested her in that moment. So much of the forest looked the same to her: green, viney, full of life and overflowing with water and mist. The desert looked the same too, but in time you got to know this rock that looks like an arrow or that hill that curves toward the rising suns. When the trees grew quickly and the vines hung a little differently each day, it was hard to remember the way to go; the Wookiees traveled through it like it was nothing, but to Rey it seemed endless foreign. She could walk back toward the sunset, certainly, but only by following the same path each day was she truly sure she'd come home again.

Malla carried the heavy cooking pot, almost spilling over with sweet-smelling food, as lightly as a bundle of cloth. Rey followed her in silence, listening to the animals around them and trying to walk as quietly as a Wookiee. She could be happy here, pretending to be a Wookiee. Just an ordinary girl, taking food to a sick friend; she could lead a quiet life, and forget the adventures and the sadness and the near-constant loss. Wookiees lived four hundred years; in her lifetime she'd likely never say goodbye to another person she loved. She'd hold Lump's babies as an old woman and they'd bury her here in the woods and someone, sometime in the future, would remember only dimly the human lady who'd chosen to be a Wookiee.

_This is it, _Malla said, interrupting Rey's reverie. _Her mate died in the wars; doesn't even have someone to send home a few credits now and then. And they had an exceptionally large family: three children. _Malla shook her head, thinking of those little ones. _The Rookaroo thinks she'll recover but she can't get out of bed just now to take care of them. Speak softly. Up you go._

And she gestured at the rope ladder. Rey was to go up first so the pot didn't dangle above her head as she went. She climbed calmly and steadily, up, up, up, and pulled herself over onto the platform. The door was covered with a curtain made from strung beads, hanging down in long lines from the lintel, so she couldn't see in. It was just as well she not surprise the sick Wookiee within; no one wanted an unknown human to just pop up out of nowhere into their home. Malla handed her the cooking pot as she lifted herself on the platform; it was just as heavy as Rey had expected. For just an instant, she remembered that she could just lift the thing with her mind, but she shoved that though away and turned toward the door.

Malla cooed a gentle greeting and a female voice replied within; she pulled the beaded curtain aside and let Rey enter ahead of her, bearing the porridge.

_Wensa, this is Chewie's friend Rey, _Malla said in soft tones, indicating they should speak Basic for Rey's sake. Rey nodded awkwardly, unsure of what to do or how to properly greet her. _Would you set up the pot on the fire? _she asked of Rey.

The sick woman was reclining on a sleeping cot pulled into the main room, close to the fire.

_Oh, Mallatobuck, _the female Wookiee, named Wensa, murmured, as Rey began to stir the pot. _We can always count on you._ She was small for a Wookiee, with russet-colored fur that lacked the near-obsessive care the others paid to their coats.

_Shush, _Malla whispered, sitting on the floor. From the small bag around her shoulders, she drew her wooden comb and vial of oil, and began working on Wensa's fur. _How's your little girl?_

_Haven't had the strength to brush her, _Wensa replied, quietly. _Her brother's been trying but she's a squirmer. _Malla laughed gently and worked on a tangle with her fingers. Rey, grateful for an activity, focused on the food and let her mind wander. The windows and doors were all covered with those same beads, so it was dark inside the treehouse except for the light from the fireplace. The house itself seemed laid out similarly to Malla and Chewie's, likely a standard design for a Wookiee home, and hung with tapestries to cover the walls and keep in the warmth. They were clearly woven by a different hand, however; instead of figures acting out the legends of old, there was an endless forest of vines and leaves and flowers covering the walls in soft colors and clean lines. It seemed like the woods had been brought inside, or that it just poured in of its own accord. The home was cozy in a different way, smaller but proudly tended even as its objects seemed shabbier and older and more used than what Rey was accustomed to. Children's toys scattered on the floor, one a fuzzy little ragdoll, its faceless head a matted and well-loved mess.

Her attention snapped back when Malla mentioned Lump's upcoming _geferrr. _

_I don't suppose I'll be back on my feet in five days,_ Wensa said, sounding regretful, _but I'll have Grashalong go pay our respects._

That appeared to please Malla, who squeezed Wensa's hand. Rey found a dish and a spoon and scooped warm porridge into the dish for Wensa. Malla took it and passed it to her, and they both watched Wensa take careful, grateful sips from the bowl.

"Is this what you do all day?" Rey asked, when they were a good distance from Wensa's treehouse.

_Not every day, _Malla said, thoughtfully. _But there's always someone who needs something._

That was exactly the answer Rey had expected. "What if you don't like the person who needs help?"

Malla shrugged, shifting the cooking pot from one hand to the other. _It doesn't matter if I like them. If I can help them, then I should. _

That was also what Rey had expected. "Then … I think I need to talk with you about something."


	8. Chapter 8

_Chewbacca, _Malla called before they'd even reached the top of the rope ladder into the house. She called his name again as she passed through the doorframe, even as she saw him sitting, surprised, on the floor by the fire. _Did Lump tell you about the Trandoshans? _

He shook his head, looking back and forth between his wife and Rey behind her, confused. He gave a little roar in response, inarticulate but clear in meaning. Malla dropped the pot with a louder _clump _than she'd likely intended and sat down beside him, while Rey scrambled into the house and tried to stay out of the way.

_Did you know they send their children away? _

Chewie was obviously not understanding Malla's sudden burst of emotion over their planet's invasive species. He shook his head and roared again, louder, all the more confused.

She explained Rey's story to him, what she and Lump had seen the day before and what Jace had said about the mothers who were trying to resist.

"Shouldn't we help them?" Rey asked, speaking for the first time.

Chewie looked up at her and made a high-pitched moan. _Because a Twi'lek told you this?_

He was right: there was no reason to believe Jace To Abbo was telling the truth. She'd seen the children being taken away, yes, but whether there were some among the Trandoshans who wanted to resist sending them away for training, well … Rey rolled her eyes, more at herself and her own uncharacteristic credulity. She sat down heavily on the floor so that all three of them were cross-legged around the low fire.

"I just can't stop thinking about it," she said, finally.

Chewie was deep in thought, considering it all. _I think we need to find your Twi'lek._

She took them back into town, to the tavern where she and Lump had first met Jace. The tavern was quiet, with no one but the chestnut-brown bartender, who stood calmly washing wooden drinking vessels in preparing for the evening. The little shop was occupied only with Wookiees, as were the wooden catwalks between buildings. The three of them gave up on town and walked toward the mines. Jace had seen her coming yesterday; maybe he'd notice her again. She was the only human here that she knew of, after all, and was easy to spot.

When they came to the place where she and Lump had watched the Trandoshan miners going in and out of the caves, it occurred to her to wonder if Lump would be in trouble for showing her. _Gerferrr_ or no, he was still under his parents' care, and was supposed to be looking after Rey, not introducing her to dangerous new species. If they had any thoughts of scolding their son later, though, Malla and Chewie did not show it. Concern was written on their faces and they moved in near-total silence behind her as she led them down the path where Jace had taken them to show the children.

The spot where the transport had stood was marked by ripped-up grass and burn marks. Three-toed prints had been pressed into the half-dry mud, large ones deep and small ones on the surface. Chewie sniffed the air, smelling the trees and the disturbed soil beneath their feet, murmuring almost under his breath. It was clear to the Wookiees, after a moment, that something very like what Rey had described had indeed occurred here.

"I wasn't lying," Rey said.

_Of course not,_ Malla said quickly, conciliatory. She looked at her husband. Neither of them had doubted her; it wasn't her own credibility they didn't trust.

_What about the others? _Chewie asked, saying aloud what they were both thinking. _How do we know there are others?_

They didn't, Rey knew. She'd trusted Jace, and she couldn't even say why. She didn't like him, didn't really want to spend any more time with him; yet she'd taken him at his word that some of the Trandoshan parents didn't want to relinquish their children and were crying out for her help. Why?

Pride, of course. It seemed so clear to her now, standing in the clearing, that she'd believed him because it fit what she wanted to be true – that she could still be of help to someone. That she wasn't just a little nothing, a dusty scavenger from Jakku, the granddaughter to evil. The ultimate reason for the deaths of everyone who had ever loved her. Her emotions always seemed so close to the surface lately; her eyes were starting to sting. Anger, at herself and her own foolishness, bubbled up furiously in her chest and she turned away from her friends.

And almost ran right into the Twi'lek's broad body. He stepped back, just enough to be able to look at her.

"Child of Darkness," Jace said by way of greeting, his eyes flickering over Rey's body, unsubtle and unwelcome. She felt his gaze, hot and inquiring, as if he were a flame looking for a corner to nibble at. Chewie gave her a look out of the corner of his eyes. The Twi'lek gave a dismissive glance at Malla and Chewie, observing them but betraying no interest whatsoever. "You brought friends."

She couldn't say that she liked the sobriquet, but in that moment it felt apt. "You're hiding something," she seethed.

Jace To Abbo looked stricken. "Hiding something?" he repeated, laying his hand dramatically over his chest. "You bring Wookiee assassins to my place of business and accuse _me _of misdeeds?"

Chewie gave a loud roar of protest that did little to counter Jace's impression.

Jace turned his eyes to her, big and blue-green like his skin but deeper, like the tumultuous waters of an ocean planet. His affect shifted back to cool, slick calm again; everything he did was an act, she realized. To what end? "Child of Darkness, I am hiding nothing from you. Only come and meet _my_ friends, and you will know."

Rey checked in with the weight of her staff slung over her back. She wished she had a lightsaber at her hip, but such a thing was absurdly showy and not at all a fit weapon for the forest. A blaster would be nice, but she thought of Chewie and his bowcaster over his shoulder and felt a little better. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and nodded once.

Malla and Chewie each gave their own grumbles of assent. Full-grown, adult Wookiees could take care of themselves, especially against one slightly pudgy Twi'lek. They'd see what he had to show them.

The three of them followed Jace down the hill and back into the woods, over a narrow path toward the Trandoshan village. Or that, at least, was what the Wookiees called it; Rey hadn't seen it for herself until now. It seemed reasonable that the Trandoshans would have a village where the mine workers lived, a place for living their daily lives, buying food, trading stories. Every species had its own ways, of course, but some things simply had to be done, no matter one's particulars.

She was mistaken, however, that it could rightly be called a village. Rather, what Jace showed them was more like a barracks. Unlike Wookiee dwellings, the Trandoshan buildings were made of brick and built directly on the ground of an area cleared of trees. Two stories tall, they were laid out in parallel to each other, three dusty, terra cotta buildings with open windows and domed rooves. They were built intentionally to remind their denizens of the nooks and crags where lizards dwell in the desert, she supposed. The Trandoshans were few here; most were already at work in the mines. A few men sat together, their blasters slung over their backs, forgotten as they played a game of dice in the dust. These were the guards, Rey imagined, charged with keeping the natives away from their decidedly undesirable little buildings. Which was funny – no Wookiee would want to enter there anyway. In any case, the guards seemed determinedly unconcerned with maintaining security.

Jace began walking around the clearing, staying just in the trees, as if he were avoiding the guards all the same. His robes today were an elegant black satin, and they trailed just slightly behind him like a train. Deep gold embroidery was stitched into the fabric all over, and a solid black sash was tied around his waist. His sleeves were wide and hung long, almost to his knees. It was a strange thing to wear while traipsing through the Kashyyyk forests, but that was not Rey's problem. He could ruin his expensive garments any way he liked. Her own tawny dress was short enough over the worn leather boots that it stayed clean and dry whatever the terrain beneath her feet, and, being a former bedsheet, was without sleeves to catch on the twigs as she passed by.

He took them around the back of the Trandoshan settlement, behind the three neat and orderly buildings, and out of the woods at last. They walked silently up to one of the buildings, to the open door, and Jace knocked on the jamb.

A female Trandoshan – or, at least, Rey assumed she was a female as she was wearing a tunic to her thighs over her trousers; it was hard to tell – came to the door, a baby on her hip. The baby Trandoshan was smaller than the ones she and Lump had seen being herded into the transport yesterday, and it clung to the adult fiercely. The adult hid herself somewhat behind the doorframe when she saw the Wookiees there with Jace.

"Garsha," he said, "Don't be afraid. They're going to help you."

"But they're _Wookiees_," she hissed back, her voice harsh but quiet, as if she hoped Chewie and Malla wouldn't hear.

Jace looked over his shoulder at them, as if only noticing that fact now. "Yes, I suppose they are. But they're here anyway. Will you tell them?"

Garsha glanced back into the building behind her, checking to see if anyone saw her. She hitched up the baby in her arms. Then she sighed, looking at the child, and said, "He's only just hatched and they want to take him away from me."

Malla made a noise behind her that Rey couldn't interpret, but she imagined that her mother's heartstrings had just been plucked.

"What do _you_ want?" Rey asked her.

Garsha looked up at Rey, as if seeing her there for the first time. "I want to keep my baby," she replied, her voice fierce and rough. Of course she did. "Will you help me?"

Rey looked at Jace, who merely looked back, expectantly. Garsha hadn't asked him for help, but Rey. "What can we do?" Rey asked him, unsure.

"Help me sneak them out, Garsha and her baby and the others who want to leave," Jace said, almost immediately. "If we can get them to Rwookrrorro we can get them to a ship and offworld."

Rey hesitated. She looked at Chewie, who simply growled. It seemed a little thing, as if Garsha could simply walk out this back door while the guards were busy, and leave. But if it were that simple, she would clearly have already done so. "How many more are there?"

"Three more women. Four adults, three children, and …" Jace said, pausing.

"And?" Rey demanded. He really could be tiresome.

"And an egg."


	9. Chapter 9

"An egg," Rey repeated. She knew, frankly, nothing about Trandoshan reproduction, but she was fairly certain that transporting an egg of any kind would be much more delicate than even a new hatchling. "No."

Garsha looked at her, scandalized. "Should Hasheth just be left behind because her child needs more care than mine?"

Again Jace looked mildly at Rey. Chewie spoke again, more insistently. _I don't like it._

But Malla was already looking at the baby, and Rey knew that she was seeing her own baby, sold into slavery only a few decades ago. For a Wookiee, that might as well have been last week. Chewie too could see it on Malla's face and his own expression softened. Rey thought again about what it might feel like to have a mate at her side whose happiness was her own; she knew Chewie was exactly as far in as Malla was, no matter his misgivings.

Even still, Rey couldn't believe it was her own voice that said, "Fine. We'll help you."

Jace and Rey and Chewie and Malla walked back toward town, the collection of treehouses where the Wookiee community gathered. Chewie and Malla walked ahead, discussing a plan anxiously in Shyriiwook, which meant Rey had no choice but to walk with Jace. At first he was quiet beside her, but she looked over at him and realized that he had his eyes on her even as they walked. His gaze was hot and disquieting. "What?" she snapped.

"A woman like you could be anywhere in the galaxy," he said, the intentional silkiness returned to his voice. "Why would you come here?"

"My friends are here," Rey replied flatly. _A woman like me?_ She thought it was a compliment, or meant to be one, but she didn't want anything of the sort from Jace To Abbo. He was quiet again, but only for a few paces.

"I'm a wealthy man," he said. Rey stopped walking and turned to face him.

"What are you trying to say?" She felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if the oiliness of his words were rubbing off onto her skin. He looked at her, his eyes scanning her entire body, lingering on her breasts and hips. Involuntarily, Rey wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Are you here for me, Child of Darkness?"

That was too much. "I wouldn't sleep with you even if you did pay me!" she hissed, more loudly than she intended.

The Twi'lek stood absolutely still for several moments, as if surprised he had elicited that response from her. Chewie had stopped walking, too, and he called back to her in alarm.

"No, Chewie, I'm fine," she said, not taking her eyes off Jace.

The Twi'lek still stood still, looking shocked. "Then you're … not on Kashyyyk to kill me?"

"You're not making any sense," Rey sputtered. Everything about him was frustrating and strange. "Why would I want to kill you? Aside from the obvious." She could easily imagine he'd upset someone, somewhere, enough to earn a death threat or two. Irritation welled up in her chest; the reservoir of anger and darkness that dwelled there now made it a short journey to the surface. "I'm here to help those women get their children off Kashyyyk. Because you asked me to."

Jace looked at her, squinting as if trying to see something far off. Then he smiled, those horrible, pointed teeth glinting. "Yes," he said, at last. "Of course."

He continued to stand before her, calmly now, the edge of fear ebbing away from him. Rey realized that she was sensing his emotions; her own fury had overflowed the banks she'd put around it, around the calling of the Force. She tamped it all down again within herself and straightened her back. She wasn't as tall as Jace, but she didn't need to fear him; he was afraid of her, at least a little, afraid she was some sort of assassin sent to Kashyyyk to kill him for unknown crimes. She pressed down the part of herself that reached for the Force and leaned instead into the part that had kept her safe for fourteen years alone on Jakku. He was clearly not a fighter, and she was.

"Well," Jace said, dropping her gaze at last. He brushed imaginary dust off his robes. "I'm glad we understand each other."

"Do we?" she asked, harshly.

"Unless you'd like to amend your previous statement," he oozed, coming back into himself again and eying her lecherously. "Then yes, I think we do."

The plan that Chewie and Malla had come up with was no worse than anything Rey could have thought up. The next night, when all three moons were dark, the three of them would be led back into the Trandoshan village by Jace To Abbo, and carefully guard the women and children in their escape. They'd walk the many hours to Rwookrrorro where Jace would have a ship waiting to take them wherever he could arrange for them to go. It was the kind of simple, straight-forward plan that she would expect from Malla – and it was guaranteed to encounter some kind of problem along the way.

The next day, Malla behaved as if nothing unusual were going on. She made breakfast and helped Lump get ready for school. Rey listened, hating not telling him. She'd slept on her pallet in his room, listened to his breathing, and thought about the secret she was carrying. Malla and Chewie hadn't told him, so she hadn't either, and she hated it. _Three days until your gerferrr,_ Malla reminded him, cheerfully, inside the house. Chewie was quiet, thoughtful, as he ate on the deck with Rey.

_Dad,_ Lump said, as he come outside. _Tell me where you're going tonight._

For an instant, Chewie tried to deny that they were going anywhere, but Rey knew it was lost.

"How did you know?" she asked him.

He growled. _They're acting weird and you're acting weird. Something is going on and I want in. _

"You're not going to like it," Rey said, calmly, not getting up. Lump thought about that for a moment.

_Kriffing Trandoshans,_ he spat. Malla gave a grunt from inside the house; she'd been listening.

"Yes, kriffing Trandoshans," Rey agreed, as she finally rose to her feet. She was wearing the brown tunic and leggings, her feet bare on the smooth wood floor, and she barely came up to Lump's shoulders. Had he grown since she'd arrived on Kashyyyk? "Jace has four women and their kids who want to leave the village."

Lump made a sound of frustration. _You're going to help them escape? You've seen what they've done to Kashyyyk._

"I know and I have. But Lump, they want to leave."

Malla came out onto the wooden deck then, her face sorrowful. _I would have done anything to bring you home when they took you. We can stop that from happening for these mothers. _She reached out and petted Lump's head. He was simmering.

_They took me,_ he said at last, his words spilling out almost faster than Rey could keep up. _The Trandoshans took me and they made me work for them. _He paused. _They tore down the forest and they made me do it for them. They hunted us like animals for sport, Mom. _

_I know, _Malla said, her voice soft and sad. _And these ones won't. _

"Not ever," Rey said, realizing it was true as she said it. "They will be out of the cycle and far away, and the children will grow up never being part of it."

Lump turned away from them, seething with anger. Rey knew, of course, what it was to have her freedom taken away, to be forced to do work she didn't want to do to benefit someone who wanted nothing good for her. Who would talk even more from her if she let him and would think nothing of it if she simply died in the work. That was why his parents hadn't told him: they knew how angry it would make him. After a minute, Lump's breathing slowed and he turned back to them.

_Fine. I'm coming too. _

Malla didn't like it, but a third Wookiee would make for a more formidable group.

As the sun began to set, Malla called her inside and they all four ate together, a lovely, hearty stew of tubers and meat and seasoned just so by Malla's expert hand. This was their last meal until they returned from Rwookrrorro in the morning; for safety they would carry as little as possible.

The Wookiees each carried a bowcaster. For a moment, Rey considered going back for Luke's lightsaber. It was elegant and comfortable, and she knew she could defend the entire group with it, but it was unsubtle. To ignite a lightsaber was to declare herself, and that could bring as much danger on them as anything else she could imagine. She settled for her staff and a borrowed blaster.

"Child of Darkness," Jace said, in his silky tones when they met him on the hill. "Friends."

The three of them sat under a shrub for cover, listening to the movement below them. Malla was just a little ways off, only a few feet, her face turned downward so she could keep an eye out, while Chewie and Jace went down to the barracks and knocked on the window frame to signal the women to come out.

_Tell me about him_, Lump said, so quietly she wasn't quite sure she'd heard him right.

"What?"

_Tell me about him. Ben. What was he like?_ He was speaking quietly not so the Trandoshans didn't hear, but so his mother didn't. He was trying to keep Rey's business as private as possible.

Rey thought for a moment. The memory was, at best, bittersweet, now that she knew how the story had to end. "He was a good listener." She was quiet for a moment and then, "He let me tell him anything, anything that was on my mind, and you never told me I was wrong for it. He was just… gentle about everything when we talked. He always told me the truth, even when it wasn't in his own best interest. He always told the truth and He was always just there, just close by." She thought about the feeling of him, the little humming shadow in the edge of her mind that she hadn't ever noticed until it was extinguished.

"He had a temper, and he could be harsh and sharp. He wasn't happy. No, really very sad. He wanted…" She thought for a moment. What _had_ Ben wanted? He was sardonic and bitter and cold – he was miserable. "He wanted me to know him. He wanted me to see him, and to know him, and to want him anyway. When I was with him," she whispered, drawing in a ragged breath, "he was always so glad to see me. When I was with him, I was the most interesting and beautiful person he had ever known. He made me feel…"

She was quiet for a long while. She knew that Lump must wonder about her, but she had to choose her words carefully. "He made me feel important."

Rey hadn't ever spoken about Ben; not really. She could never tell Finn and Rose and the others – what would they say? Eventually, someone in the Resistance would have killed her for talking so kindly about the Supreme Leader – even Finn would have been horrified. They'd never understand, and she couldn't blame them for that. Leia knew, because Leia knew everything, but the pain in her heart was even greater than the one in Rey's because she had borne it for so much longer. They never spoke of him aloud.

And so she was thinking, when the Trandoshan women with their children in tow emerged from the barracks under the darkened moons.


	10. Chapter 10

Malla, Lump, and Rey moved silently down the hill toward the Trandoshans. As they drew closer, Rey could see that there were indeed four women, each in matching tunic and trousers and covered over with a simple short cloak, the hoods pulled over their heads, and three children wearing identical short tunics. One woman, yellow of skins and eyes, cradled a plan brown burlap bag close to her chest; that one must be Hasheth, carrying her egg, Rey realized. She'd have to keep a special eye on Hasheth and her unborn child.

Garsha picked up her baby and put him under her cloak. She was whispered to him, hushing him and trying to calm his fears. It must have seemed strange to the children, to be taken out of the barracks at night and met with strangers. The other two were just a little older than Garsha's, walking on their own but not nearly strong enough to get through the journey without being carried. Without a word spoken, the entire group moved into the trees and out of the dim lights that shone from the other side of the barracks.

"We'll walk single-file," Rey whispered to the women. "You follow the person in front of you and you do not speak. Keep the children quiet."

The women were looking more and more afraid as she spoke, glancing sidelong at one another as if unsure they wanted to go through with it after all. Rey felt herself shift slightly; these were not soldiers to move through a battlefield, but women and children fleeing oppression. They were not even accustomed to the ordinary deprivations she'd lived with her entire life, and they were leaving behind whatever they knew and entering into the unknown. They had to find a way to make this as easy as possible for all of them.

She sighed. "Malla, Chewie, Lump: can you carry the children?"

The three Wookiees all stiffened, shocked by the request – even Malla, whose sense of compassion had signed the deal to get them into this. After a tense moment, Lump gestured to Garsha and took the baby out of her arms. Garsha hesitated to hand her child over to a Wookiee – she knew what her people did to his – but then she did. The other two women followed, handing the babies to the Wookiees whose strength could bear them better.

"I'll take the lead," Rey said, once that was settled. The children were murmuring, unsure about their nursemaids. "Jace, you're in back."

Chewie grumbled, _You don't know the way._

He was right, of course, but she was the only one of the guardians not carrying a child. She looked around the circle, at the nervous women whose eyes kept flitting back to the barracks to check for guards and then to the children to be sure they were quiet and safe.

"Okay," she said, slowly. "Jace, you lead us. I'll mind the back."

But Jace shook his head. "I'm not going," he said.

Rey stared at him, her mouth slightly agape.

"I'm the morning supervisor," he said, his voice slow and deliberate, like that of a patient schoolteacher waiting for her students to understand. "If I'm not at work in the morning and there are missing workers, they're going to fit the pieces together."

She should have known he'd find a reason not to go, but she couldn't disagree that this seemed likely.

"Chewie, _you _take the lead," she said at last. She looked around at the group, trying to make a decision. "Hasheth, you and I will be in back." Carrying her egg, Hasheth would tire, and she couldn't slow down the others if she began to drag. Hasheth didn't argue but pressed the bundle closer to her.

"Docking bay 2187," Jace said. "Be there by morning. May the Force be with you," he added, very softly. And with that, they began.

The night felt somehow thick around them as they walked. It was the fear and worry, she decided, as they walked together in a straight line thought the forest. The children shifted and sometimes squawked, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar mammals carrying them. But their mothers muttered to them, and they calmed, and the group kept going.

Broad leaves with slick, shiny surfaces drooped into the path as they walked, evening dew dripping, perfumed and sweet, onto their heads. Pink and white and purple flowers hung just out of their reach, opening up for night bugs to collect their pollen. If they hadn't been smuggling women and children out of a work camp, Rey might have found it a lovely evening.

The two Trandoshan women between her and Lump were strong: they'd spent their lives working in a mine, after all; but worry was weighing on them. They had taken the biggest risk of their lives, turned their backs on their own people. Rey knew it took courage to make a choice like that. Leia had told her once about her own decision to abandon her post as New Republic senator in order to instead be the figurehead leading the Resistance. She'd built the New Republic and she loved it and believed in it, but she couldn't stand by while its leadership ignored the threat of the First Order.

What had caused these women to turn away from their people? Each of them had surely grown up in the communal system herself, and -

A crunch of twigs in the woods broke off Rey's train of thought. Trandoshans were excellent hunters, born and bred to the hunt; they wouldn't have let themselves be heard unless it was on purpose – but that was mostly the high-born. One of the women, the one in front of Hasheth, hissed "it's the guards!"

Even as she said it, a hot pink blaster bolt tore out of the darkness behind them, cutting down a branch from a tree over the Wookiees' heads. A large branch, the size of a tree itself, creaked as it feel into the path, several of its heavy offshoots knocking Garsha to the ground. Lump lifted her up with one hand, as if she were as light as a leaf, and Garsha gasped air back into her lungs.

Malla gave a cry, and all eight of them began to run. Rey and Hasheth and the other woman scrambled up over the branch, Rey boosting them up as best she could before following them. Hasheth's eyes as she passed by Rey were wild with panic, her arms wrapped protectively around the bundle on her chest. Rey thought she heard a tiny sob of fear, but there was no time for comfort. The group stepped off the path and into the trees, and Chewie pushed them down low to the ground while he used his height to look for the guards. After a moment, he nodded to signal that they should move again, and they all stepped onto the path, moving more quickly.

"Rshara!" Hasheth called, when the woman in front of her tripped. She had been hit by the tree branch too, though she didn't want to complain, and now Rey could see dark blood running down her leg, staining her pant leg and causing it to stick to the wound. A memory tingled in Rey's hand: she could help Rshara, but the cost would be great. Rey was not willing to open that door again. She pressed, pressed down the calling within her and pulled the woman up to her feet by her arm.

They moved, almost jogging now, trying to keep up with the Wookiees' long limbs as they strode through the woods and away from the guards and their blasters. It took Rey a moment to realize that, ahead of her, Chewie had slid his bowcaster from his back to his side, the more easily to grab it if that became necessary. A deep, low sound escaped her, a sound that had meant to be a sigh but couldn't help but be a cry. This – all of this – was a bad idea, and she cursed the moment she first spoke to Jace To Abbo.

In the back of the line, with one woman injured and another carrying her precious egg in her arms, Rey began to fall behind the Wookiees and the other women. She could hear their feet soft on the forest floor and the occasional sound from one of the children, but they were falling behind. She hesitated to call out to Chewie, to ask them to slow down. Instead, she took Rshara by the arm and tried to hurry her along, limping just a little at first but then more as the terrain became more difficult.

Without the light of the moons, it was hard to say how much time passed, but Rey judged that they'd been walking for almost two standard hours. The total walk to Rwookrrorro should be about six hours, even on this wooded path, but Rshara and Hasheth were not making good time. She lost track of Lump's furry head in front of them amidst the tangle of leaves and vines, and soon all she could do was track them and try to follow where they led.


	11. Chapter 11

Rshara and Hasheth kept their eyes down, minding where they walked so as not to fall. They had put their trust in Rey completely to keep them safe. She couldn't imagine why; they didn't know her and they didn't even trust their own people. Why put their lives and lives of their children in the hands of a completely unknown human stranger?

Then again, they weren't putting their fate in the hands of a human, but of a Twi'lek. It was he who had chosen Rey to reveal his plan to rescue the Trandoshans. And why he'd done that, she couldn't imagine.

Up ahead, beyond Rey's sight, Malla made a sound to signal it was time to rest. Rey didn't want to risk joining up with the others, so she and her two Trandoshan women simply sat down where they were on the forest floor.

"Do you think my baby is okay?" Rshara asked, nervously, her voice a tense hiss.

"Malla is the best mother I know," Rey replied, realizing that that was true as she said it – though she had little competition for the title in Rey's memory. Rshara nodded and tried to comfort herself with that thought. She rolled up her torn pantleg to look at the scrape; the knee, or whatever Trandoshans called that joint, was it was badly skinned, but not damaged permanently. Rshara poured just out a little of her water canteen to rinse away a bit of the grit.

Rey turned to Hasheth, still holding her bundle close to her chest. Did she have to keep it warm in order to incubate it? Or was she just too afraid to let it out of her grasp?

"Why are you doing this?" Rey asked, very quietly. "You grew up this way; this is the way of your people. Why do you want out so badly?"

Hasheth was silent for a long time. Then she lifted her eyes to Rshara's, and then Rey's. "I've lived here long enough to have seen how the Wookiees live," she said, slowly, her voice little more than a rasp. She jerked her head up the trail, to where Chewie and Malla and Lump sat with the children. "I want my baby to have a family."

Her words stuck in Rey's heart. _A family._ That was all Rey had ever wanted, too. She'd waited all those years on Jakku, telling herself each morning that today could be the day her family came home to her, pretending they weren't already gone for good. She'd hoped, however foolishly, to make Ben Solo her family, and now he was gone forever. And she too had seen how the Wookiees lived, and she wanted, more than anything, that love for herself.

Rey's annoyance melted away. In Hasheth's frightened eyes, Rey could see herself reflected.

"_Hashhhhhethhhh_," whispered the wind, the breeze in the branches above them. But it was not the wind. Hasheth froze, terror rising up into her face. Rshara too tensed up beside them; her flashing green eyes scouring the space above them, her tongue flicking in the air. Rey drew her blaster, feeling its weight in her hand. She was glad now that she had it and not Luke's lightsaber; little good a laser sword would do, with trees and vines and black leaves all around. She climbed, silently as she could, to her feet, staying low to the ground. Up the pathway ahead, the Wookiees stirred and prepared for action.

"_Hashhhhethhhhh, rokhara hashem garu_."

The words were as clear as anything. They weren't coming from above their heads as Rey had thought at first but from down the path. The words were Dosh; a Trandoshan hunter was near.

All at once, awareness dawned on Hasheth's face. She had realized that she knew the voice. Rey could read that on her face, as plainly as aurebesh written in a book. Rey didn't need to use the Force to feel Hasheth's fear as it became her own.

"_Rokhara hashem garu, Hasheth. Ssitu garu hatosha." _A little closer now. It was a male, his voice just a little bit sing-song, like someone trying to call a child out during a game of hide-and-seek.

"It's Karsi," Hasheth said, to Rshara and not to Rey. Then, "It's the father."

Rey hadn't thought about the fathers of these children. What kind of relationship did the males have to their offspring? This one, it seemed, wanted very much to regain custody over his female's egg. Or perhaps he cared less about the egg and more about control over his female herself. In either case, he didn't sound very friendly. Karsi was moving very smoothly through the woods, comfortable in the dark night air. His footfalls were even and careful, avoiding branches as he drew nearer. The woods dampened sound, as far as Rey was concerned; it was harder to hear the enemy here than in the desert. But Karsi was large and heavy, and he no longer seemed to care if his prey heard him coming.

Hasheth was thinking hard, doing the math in her head. Her yellow eyes darted back and forth between Rshara and Rey, then down to the bundle where her egg lay. "I'm going to draw him off," she whispered. Rey wasn't sure she'd heard that right. Surely, Hasheth wasn't going to do such a foolish, rash thing. Hasheth pressed the bundle into Rey's arms, ignoring the blaster and Rey's general look of shock. "Don't let him smash my egg."

With that, and without giving Rey even time to squeak in protest, Hasheth was running through the undergrowth toward Karsi's voice.

"_Hassi khosa garu," _Hasheth cried, her voice defiant as she ran. Her feet were crashing through the woods, tearing through the branches with abandon. Horror rose in Rey's chest as she realized what Hasheth was doing and what was about to happen. The calling in the back of her mind lifted up, like a mist off a lake.

"_Ssu besha ssita tosha kesh," _Karsi replied, his voice harsh and implacable. Two blaster bolts rang out in quick succession, lighting up the forest around them; Rey felt them crash against her, as if it were she who had been hit, the bolt passing through her body with incredible swiftness, like lightning or flame, cutting and burning all once. And then, she felt Hasheth's lifeforce pass away and out of the galaxy.

Rey rose to her full height to look over the bush and down the hill. There was not enough light to see Karsi with her eyes, but she certainly could through the Force. Rey lifted her blaster and squeezed the trigger, just once, and watched its awful red power sweep down the hill and into Karsi. His body lit up in the light of the bolt as it struck him, his hand upraised with blaster brandished, his scaly skin glistening, his face full of rage and surprise. And then he fell too, collapsing backwards, beside Hasheth's crumpled body, his life passing out and then gone.

More were coming. No one could miss the light of three blaster bolts in the utter darkness. Rey looked down to Rshara.

"Run."


	12. Chapter 12

Rey looped the burlap bag over her neck so that the egg lay against her belly. She wrapped her left arm around it to steady it, keeping her right hand free to hold the blaster. Rshara was already on her feet and running, crawling really, through the dense wood to the Wookiees and the children. She whispered in Dosha to the child in Lump's arms, the same phrase three or four times, almost like a magical incantation or a prayer. There were tears running down Rshara's face when Rey caught up, tears of fear and grief all at once.

"No time," Rey said to her, but really to everyone. She waved them forward with her blaster hand, the hand she'd just used to kill a man, and the group moved quickly back to the path. Chewie was leading again, holding back branches to keep them from snapping back on Malla. Rey wasn't sure how he was doing it, moving with such ease through the forest without light to guide him, but only his memory. The women followed, cowed with fear; Rshara gave a soft sob and Garsha slid her arm around her, sharing her strength while they all kept walking. There was no time to mourn on a battlefield; Rey knew that deeply. There was only the path forward, never back. Behind them lay only death.

The egg was heavier than it looked for its size. It seemed to be perfectly spherical, as far as she could feel through the fabric of the bag, and the size of the balls children used to play games in the street. Smaller than the children the Wookiees were carrying, but not by much.

The Force was rising in her. She'd been pushing it down for so many weeks now that its rise made her feel sick to her stomach. There was no more time for that than there was to mourn Hasheth. They could only move forward, forward.

Rey turned back often, blaster raised, to see if there were more Trandoshans following them. She could feel them, somewhere behind, but couldn't see in the black night. Morning had to come, she knew; the sun would rise and the light would come and they'd reach Rwookrrorro and this night would end. Or perhaps not. The Trandoshans were coming, whether or not tomorrow was.

The very finest tendrils of dawn were creeping over the horizon, turning the sky just the slightest purple. The children, exhausted, had fallen asleep in the Wookiees' arms and no longer stirred with each step. A soft, familiar sound reached Rey's ear and she strained to hear it. The river.

She remembered then that she and Chewie had passed over the river on their way out of Rwookrrorro. Her mind had been so clouded, so distracted, so horribly numbed with grief that she had barely noticed and hadn't recorded the event at all in her memory, but now she remembered. The river shouldn't really be called a river; it was not terribly rough and nor was it very broad, but from this angle, the way from the Wookiee village, there wasn't a bridge for miles on either side. She and Chewie had crossed over on a downed log someone had set over it. For a Wookiee, such a route was easy. For a Trandoshan, who knew?

But much more concerning was how exposed it made them all. The tree trunk lay over the river, and a being crossing it would have to stand upright on it and walk carefully from one side to the other. Around the walker, there would be nothing: no trees, no cover at all.

"Quick as you can," Rey said, aloud. Chewie sent Lump over first, gripping the Trandoshan baby in his arms. He went quickly and smoothly, as if he were walking on any ordinary road. Then Chewie helped the Trandoshan women, one at a time, up onto the log from the ground. They scampered over on all fours, surprising Rey; she hadn't realized that they possessed that type of locomotion, though she supposed it made sense enough. Rey stood guard, her blaster pointed into the woods where she could sense the hunters. They were watching them, she realized. Watching and waiting.

Malla went over next, her arms wrapped tight around the child she was carrying. She didn't need Chewie's help to get onto the tree trunk, just stepped up and began moving toward the other side.

Rey felt the blaster bolts before she saw them come tearing out of the trees. She felt them moving through the air, their grim red light blinding in the first, dim morning light. Burning the air around them. Two bright bolts, as bright as suns, heading straight for Malla.

In an instant, faster than words could ever form, Rey thought about Malla's constant generosity to others, her unflagging compassion that had sealed them into this mess. And, even more, her connection to Chewie. Wookiees mated for life; with Malla gone, he's be alone for the rest of his days. Rey had lost her other half – she would not allow that to happen to Chewbacca. That could not stand.

Rey lifted her right hand, dropping the blaster to the sandy bank. As it fell, she reached out in the Force and took hold of the bolts, suspending them in midair, a few feet from her friend.

She turned back the other way, to where the Trandoshans were emerging from the woods, their blasters raised and ready to fire, their faces written with triumph. They'd captured their prey, the children who were next to labor in their mines or hunt for profit, and the women who'd betrayed their cultural value of communal childrearing. And they'd captured three troublesome Wookiees and a human. Pride emanated from them.

As the hunters caught sight of the scene laid out before them, the blaster bolts hanging in midair, suspended unnaturally, Rey lifted her other hand toward them. With a push of the Force, she threw the hunters back, and they went flying, spinning wildly. Trees were uprooted and flew away with them; sand from the riverbank followed in a spray; the rush of power that went out from her tore up the moss and pinecones and tossed them backwards onto the hunters. Whether they were dead or not, she didn't bother to check; they weren't coming back, she was sure.

She looked back to the Wookiees and Trandoshans, who were watching her, transfixed by the display of awesome power. The women were crouched on the ground, Garsha clinging to her child whom she'd wrenched from Lump's arms. Malla stood straight and tall, only her eyes betraying her terror as they focused on the bolts before her.

"Go on then," Rey said to her. Malla turned and ran the rest of the way off the tree and onto the solid ground with Lump and the women. Rey released the bolts by sharply extending her fingers, opening her hand, and they flew, harmless, into the sky behind them.

Chewie roared beside her, his voice a mix of awe and delayed fear. He ran his hand over her head, just once, and crossed over the log. She followed.

On the other side, Rey felt a strange calm. The Force was seeping back into her, like smoke finding a crack in the wall.

_Where did you learn that?_ Lump asked her, his words hushed and reverent.

"Honestly, I don't know," was all she could say, and the whole group headed toward the city gate.

Once inside, Rey made herself come out of her reverie. The effort it had taken to hold the bolts and blow away the hunters had been great; she was tired. Lump carried Garsha's child with one arm and supported Rey with his free hand, gripping her upper arm as if he were afraid she'd faint away. Dawn was breaking now, gold chasing away smoky purple from the sky. A dark figure caught Rey's eye as they passed – tall and black, vanishing like a mist around a corner.

"Lump," Rey whispered, yanking back on his hand. "I think I just …" she let her voice trail off. She had his attention; Lump had stopped walking and turned toward her, his eyes fixed on her face with worry. What she wanted to say was, she realized, absolute nonsense. "I thought I saw Ben."

The worry dissolved in Lump's gaze and became gentle, loving concern. _You are exhausted, _he replied, softly, as he took her hand to lead her along with the others. He was right; she_ was_ exhausted. It was just her imagination. Ben was dead.

They stumbled along the near-empty streets until Chewie found the docking bay Jace had named, number 2187.

_This is it, _Malla said to the women. The three of them that remained looked worse for the wear, their clothes filthy and a layer of grime over their scaly skins. She opened the door to the docking bay off the street; a single, leaf-green Twi'lek was waiting for them within.

"Come in," the Twi'lek urged them without ceremony. "Come in before someone sees you."

He looked at the women. The Wookiees handed them their children, who were now awake and blinking in the sudden light of the interior room. "I was told there were four," the Twi'lek said, suspicious.

"There were," Rey said. "We lost one on the road."

He harrumphed and then shrugged. "Tell Jace the price is the same."

He ushered the Trandoshans up toward the small ship that was their freedom. Rey knew better than to ask where he was taking them; the fewer people knew that, the safer the women would be. They could raise their children the way they wanted to, without being forced to give them away, and the children could decide for themselves who they wanted to be.

Garsha was looking at Rey and not going up the stairs with the others. She set her baby down on the ground at her feet and reached out to Rey with both hands. For an instant, Rey was afraid she was going to try to hug her, but instead Garsha lifted the yoke of the bag up over Rey's head. In the rush of the last minutes of their flight, she'd forgotten that she'd been carrying Hasheth's egg.

"I will give this child the life Hasheth wanted for it," Garsha said, solemnly, as she placed the strap around her own neck. She picked up her child and put him on her hip again. "Thank you."

Then she climbed the stairs into the ship and gave one last look back at Rey and the others. The Twi'lek followed her and the stairs retracted into the body of the ship. A puff of steam emitted from the thrusters, the ceiling swung open, and the ship lifted into the air.


	13. Chapter 13

Rey was spent, and the Wookiees could see it, yet they needed to get back to their own treehouse. Tonight was Lump's _gerferrr, _and they all wanted to be rested enough to enjoy it. Chewie broke down and rented two speeder bikes, swift means of travel, and soon they were zipping back. Rey was seated behind Lump, while his parents shared the other; she was grateful to have to do nothing but hold on. As they passed by, Lump noted aloud that Hasheth's body was gone, along with Karsi's, taken, no doubt, by the Trandoshans.

When they arrived back home, Rey could barely climb the ladder up into the house. She moved slowly back to the bedroom she and Lump shared, lay down on her pallet, and slept until the smell of lunch woke her. Even then, she lay face up, trying to gather up the desire to move.

Lump hadn't to school that day at all. Instead, the family sat together in the house, talking quietly. Only after a while did Rey realize they were speaking Shyriiwook; she'd been asleep in her room, and they had switched back to their native tongue in her absence. It was just as well. She wasn't going to be much good company that day. Rey was conflicted over bringing Lump into it; he was almost four times her age, but only in terms of standard rotations, and for his species may as well have been her baby brother. She'd fought in a war, fought literal demons, and had lost nearly everyone she loved, just as soon as she met them. And there was no pain as sharp as the thought of Ben; her soul felt like it was split in two without hm. She supposed it was.

Listening to the gentle conversation of Chewie and his family in their house made her heart glad; she was grateful that he had Malla and Lump and this community that so respected him. He had lost humans he loved, but at 234, he had so many years ahead and behind him to love his little family. Saving Malla was the very least gift she could offer him.

Finally, Rey rolled onto her side and pushed herself to her feet. Only then did hunger materialize in her stomach, and she wandered back out into the main room to join them.

Her belly filled, Rey sat on the floor for a while with those who were _her _Wookiees. Malla coaxed her to take a second helping of food before she put it away and began getting ready for everyone's baths, but Rey refused with thanks. She went back to her room instead.

A few minutes later, Lump pulled aside the curtain and came in to join her. She knelt on her pallet, two lightsabers laid out in front of her. They were such elegant machines, now that he saw them in person and not just in his father's stories. Lump sat down on the floor beside her, staring at them. He hadn't known she possessed an actual lightsaber, though he realized he should have.

_I guess you **are **a Jedi, _he said.

"I don't know what I am," Rey replied. He wanted to ask her to show him the lightsabers, but her face was so sad that he didn't want to make her feel worse, and he didn't know what would do that. Instead he sat in silence, waiting for her to speak. "These are Luke and Leia's," she said at last. "My masters. They … they made the way for me." Lump nodded, understanding, thinking of his _gerferrr _that night. "I want to honor them, and I have an idea how."

_What are you going to do? _

"I want to bury them on Tattooine," she said, and Lump wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly, so soft was her voice. "That was where Luke grew up, and it was their father's homeworld too. I don't know anything about their mother, but …" She paused. "But Alderaan is gone so maybe Leia would like it too."

Rey had dreamed of being a Wookiee and living here on Kashyyyk, but, seeing Malla's love for her boy and how it moved her to so identify with the other mothers – seeing Chewie's subsuming love for his wife and how it made him a better man – she realized that for her to stay on Kashyyyk was to die and not to live.

Lump was quiet for a moment, thinking about her words. _You're leaving, _he said at last.

And Rey nodded.

~/~/~

The road to the Rookaroo's treehouse was full of Wookiees gathering to celebrate the newest adult among them. When they realized that Chewbacca and Mallatobuck and Lumpawaroo had joined them on the way, a cheerful buzz rose up from the crowd. Wookiees congratulated the parents on their very fine young man, and spoke encouragingly to Lump. They smiled politely at Rey, but she knew that this was not about her. She was just a guest, an observer among them, and that was as it should be.

The treehouse was decorated richly, hung with sashes and buntings and ribbons. The fire in the center was high, burning coals that let off sweet smoke that curled up to the eye in the roof and made everyone's hair and fur smell softly of it. The air was thick was welcome and friendship.

Rey was not the only non-human in the room, however. She spied Jace, standing alone in the back of the room, the smoke from his hookah mixing with the sacred smoke of the fire. He was watching her, already watching her, when she arrived. Rey squeezed away from Lump and picked her way back to where Jace stood. "What the hell?" she hissed, trying to look casual despite the anger that rose in her. "That girl _died_."

"Lamentable," Jace replied, a puff of smoke exiting his mouth with the word. "But I understand the others have arrived safely in their new home, along with the egg."

Rey was relieved to hear it, but she didn't let that show on her face. "Do you think that was worth it?"

Jace tilted his head, a mocking gesture of deep thought. "I think they do. I think she did."

Insufferable Twi'lek.

"I suppose you're just going to keep working for them, even though you know what they're doing?"

Jace sighed a little, as if he were talking to a dull child. Then he leaned in, conspiratorially, so that she could feel the warmth of his skin and breath. A little crackle of energy popped between them – or perhaps she imagined it. "The known galaxy is not a safe place for us who know the Way of Life, Child of Darkness," he said, his voice a low hiss.

Rey leaned back, away from him, as his words took shape in her mind. _We who know the Way of Life._ Jace To Abbo was Force-sensitive and he had known her from the moment he laid eyes on her. Maybe the moment she'd arrived on Kashyyyk. He was afraid and he'd needed her. "You're in hiding."

He shrugged, slightly, as if to minimize the burden. "My power is not so great as yours. It would serve for little if someone took me. But," he said, lifting her eyes to hers again, "I know what became of the Jedi before my time. I see what happens to those who are … _different_ in a time of turmoil. _You_ should be hiding too."

_I am,_ she wanted to say, but obviously, she wasn't. Where could she go? The Rookaroo had seen it in her, and Jace had seen it too. They may not see the hideous blood that flowed through her veins, but the power it contained could not be concealed. Not really.

"Why get involved at all then?" she asked, at last, feeling the flames in her cheeks cooling.

He shrugged again and drew in a long drag. "I believe the Jedi called it … compassion." He released the smoke from his lungs, letting it curl around him. His deep blue-green eyes met hers, and he held her gaze for a long moment. And then, without a further word, Jace To Abbo turned and left the Rookaroo's house.


	14. Chapter 14

The ceremony was about to begin. She could tell from the way the buzz of the room and the crowd shifted, and how their faces begin to turn toward the Rookaroo's chair. Rey pressed her way back toward the front; being shorter than nearly everyone else, no one minded letting her through to see. Chewie and Malla were seated in wicker chairs, with Lump kneeling on the floor in front of the fire.

The shaman began to speak: only in their native language, which Rey did not understand, but she could feel the power of those words. She poured oil over Lump's head and smoothed it into his fur. She was calling out loudly, blessing him, praying him into their community as a full member. Lump closed his eyes, letting himself appreciate the full power and impact of the moment. Rey could feel that power emanating from the book room, the power of the force, the way of life. The other Wookiees were humming, softly and low, echoing the palpable feeling of blessing and life. Rey felt it wash over her too, that sensation of belonging. She felt it with Luke, when he shown her the dark and the light on Ahch-To, and she felt it when she woken from death in Ben's arms.

A few moments later, the prayer was complete. Lump rose from the floor and walked toward his parents. He was still speaking Shyriiwook, but Rey recognized a few words. He lay a basket of fruit in his mother's lap, and she heard him say_ Mama_; and as he placed a basket of grain in his father's lap, she heard him say _Oba_. Lump was honoring those who had made a way for him, who had allowed him to grow up and become mature. His mother was crying, tears of sadness for the baby she'd raised, and tears of joy for the man he was now. They loved him, they were proud of him, and they were his family.

The longing bubbled up within her again, and she let it rise and then ebb, knowing that this was just how it had to be. The longing that could never be fully quenched. The ceremony complete, the room overflowed with cheering enjoy, which quickly gave way to music. This was a community celebration, this newest member, and soon vessels of liquor were being passed out to everyone. Rey couldn't help but see when Lump went over to talk to a pretty young Wookiee, with for the color of summer honey. Malla found Rey and offered her a drink. Then she wrapped her long, furry arm around Rey's shoulder, and Rey leaned into her, into the sweet familiar smell of her fur. When she opened her eyes, before her was standing the Rookaroo.

She looked at Rey for a long while, which was probably only a second, and then said, _I have worn this for 200 years, and I've never really known what to do with that. But now, I think it's calling out for you_. She carefully untied the leather strap around her neck, and held out the amber-colored amulet to Rey. Despite herself, Rey held out her hand, and the Rookaroo placed the amulet in her hand and closed her fingers around it. _Be well in your journeys, mighty one, _she said, and then she melted back into the crowd of partygoers.

Rey opened her fingers and looked carefully at the amulet. Copper wire entwined it, holding it in place and onto the leather strap, but as she studied it, she realized that she knew what it was: a single, palm-sized kyber crystal.

Malla looked down at her and at the gift, feeling its weight and fearing it too. Malla stroked her head, admiring the crystal, before bending down to look her in the eye.

_I owe you my life_, Malla said, gripping Rey's shoulders with her massive hands, the delicate fingers squeezing tight. _I owe you a life debt._

She thought about that, about what Chewie had told her once, during a trundle through hyper space in the Millennium Falcon, about how he first met Han.

"No, you don't," she said. "I owe you everything. I'm in _your _debt."

But Malla only shook her head. _All I ever did was feed a hungry child. I welcomed a stranger into my home. That is only my duty, to offer hospitality. This debt must be paid._

Re-studied her eyes, chestnut brown and glittery, wet and red with worry. "I can't accept."

_Please don't dishonor me,_ Malla said, very softly, and Rey realized that there was much more at play than she knew.

_I will pay the debt_.

Rey and Malla both turned to look at Lump, who had joined them and was eagerly looking at his friend_. I will pay the debt._

Malla shook her head, insistently, sharply. But before she could speak, Rey put her hands on top of Malla's, on top of her own shoulders, and said, "You are needed here. Your people depend on you. Let Lump take me to Tattooine, and then I'll consider the debt paid."

_Tattooine? _Chewie interrupted_. No. Absolutely not. Neither of you are going there._

Lump looked up at his dad. _She needs to honor those who came before her, who made the way for her. I'll be her escort, I'll take her myself, and then the debt will be paid._

Neither Chewie nor Malla looked pleased with the situation.

_And then I'll come home_, Lump said, forcefully. _I will pay the debt and then I'll come home_.

**The story continues in Part 2, with the next chapter. If you like what I've written, please leave a comment and keep reading!**


	15. Part 2: Chapter 15

The planet below them was a patchwork of rich blue ocean and gentle green land, with white clouds swirling around in its atmosphere. She'd seen ocean planets and forest planets and desert planets, but this one was unique in its mottled beauty.

She couldn't believe Chewie had let them take the Falcon on this trip. He'd shown Lump everything he could about the ship to get him ready for the trip; Rey wouldn't have been glad to spare him the time, but it was obvious that for Chewie, this was a chance to spend time with his son – and perhaps, she realized belatedly, he feared that his boy might not come home.

_Well,_ Rey thought at that, _that's simply not going to happen. Lump is coming home, no matter what I have to do to make that so._

And while they worked, Rey held that crystal in her hand, turning it over and over. She'd remade Luke's lightsaber when she and Ben had torn it apart; she knew how it was to be done. But she'd had Leia with her then, and now she was alone. She watched Chewie as he climbed over the ship he knew so well, clanking around like it was nothing more than another tree.

_I can do this,_ she said to herself, and so she had. And without Leia to guide her, she'd turned to the other shepherd she still had: Luke's texts. After all these weeks, even touching them made her heartbeat quicken. The spine creaked softly as she opened it, the familiar, dusty smell rising up to meet her. And so she'd worked, on the floor of the hangar, with the light of Chewie and Lump's welding falling over her.

_I'm hungry_, Lump said, a little bit petulantly. A hungry Wookiee is an unpleasant Wookiee, and no one wants an unpleasant Wookiee. They decided to land and find a meal, and planetary flight control found them a docking bay in a moderately sized city. They landed the Falcon and Rey began preparing to disembark. She picked up her stack of belongings and placed it carefully in one of Han's old smuggling compartments; she tightly latched the closure and squeezed the lock closed using the Force. The two lightsabers and the Jedi texts were too precious and too expensive for the average thief to resist, assuming someone knew what they were looking at, and she could neither risk carrying them through the city nor leaving them out even within locked ship. She pulled her long poncho over her head and laid the hood over her hair. She had no idea if anyone would recognize her – there was really no reason why anyone would - but nor was there any reason to be careless. She put a blaster on her hip and noted when Lump put the bowcaster on his back. One never knew what one might encounter in a strange city.

She let the Wookiee lead the way through the docking terminal, and out into the streets. Beings of all species were there: Trandoshans, Twi'leks, humans, and anything else she could imagine. It was not a wealthy city, and its citizens were dressed in garments of ordinary style, mostly in dark gRey or brown. Working class clothing. They had landed in a good place to hide: neither of them could reasonably put on airs and slip into the wealthy district of any city in the galaxy.

It was a gray, overcast day, threatening to rain at any moment. The city people walked around as if they were unconcerned, but Rey pulled her hood a little closer to her face. Rain still disturbed her, water just falling out of the sky. It seemed so very unnatural to a girl who had grown up in the desert.

She followed long as they made their way through the roads. No doubt, she knew, he was following his nose to find a place to eat. They didn't have a lot of credits, as this was meant to be a short trip, but they had no other use for the money except for food and fuel. Between the two of them, there was nothing on the Falcon that could break which couldn't fix themselves, and as long as they stayed together they had everything they needed.

The two of them entered a small cantina, not the nice kind of place with a band or bar, just an old Rhodian woman minding an open grill and a red-robed Jawa handing out beverages from the tray balanced on his head. If this is where Lump wanted to eat lunch, it seemed fine enough as far as it went. They sat at a table and the Jawa came over. Lump selected two cups and paid him. He handed one to Rey and lifted it his own as if to wish her health. Rey reciprocated the gesture and took a sip. In typical Wookiee fashion, it was some kind of beer, too strong for her taste and too bitter, but if it made him happy and she was pleased to enjoy it with him. The old woman offered only one meal, tubers diced and cooked on the open grill with cold meat of some sort in a spicy sweet sauce. It was nothing like Malla's cooking, but it was good nonetheless. Lump enjoyed his immensely and asked for a second portion. While he ate, Rey kept an eye on the door, ever aware of their surroundings and reaching out with her feelings to scan the crowd for trouble. It was nice to be out and about the galaxy with her friend; it was good to _have _a friend, someone to go on this journey with her. He was not here merely because he felt he owed her a debt, which she would gladly have canceled at any moment if it wouldn't wound his and his family's pride so, but because he had his father's taste for adventure and unquenchable attachment to his friends. For those few moments at lunch, Rey felt completely, entirely contented.

After a while they left and picked their way back to the ship. It was only a few blocks' walk, and they retraced their own steps precisely. However, at one intersection that had not been a problem before, a crowd had gathered, prevented from crossing by a long caravan of some sort. Rey could not stifle her exasperated sigh. She been happy at lunch, but now that they were getting back to the Falcon and its precious contents, she just wanted to be there. Lump, who stood so high above her, placed one hand on her shoulder and looked out above the crowd, looking for a gap and a chance to cross.

The sound of a street scuffle was unmistakable in her ear. Someone, only a few steps away from her, was being shoved up against the wall of a nearby building. She craned her neck, trying to be subtle, but unable to quell her curiosity. A young man, no older than she, with blond hair and a full, scraggly beard, had his back against the wall, while another man, a second human, his head covered with a large knit hat and the collar of his shirt pulled up high, pressed his forearm under the blond man's chin, choking him.

"I'm not interested, Sargon," the blond man said. Sargon, the one with the hat and collar, leaned a little harder on his throat and gave hissing reply but Rey could not quite make out. She stepped away from Lump and toward the two men. Sargon laid off and let the blond man take a breath; he coughed and said, his voice hoarse, "I said no and I meant it."

As Rey came around to men, she realized that Sargon had a small vibro-blade in the hand furthest from her, its slight purple glow lighting up the left side of the blonde man's face.

"Artess isn't going to be pleased with you," Sargon said.

"I don't really care what Artess thinks of me," the blond man replied. He put on a brave face, but Rey saw his eyes flicker over to the blade more than once. She thought, _One can be brave and also prefer not to die._

The blond man gave a hard wriggle against Sargon, as if trying to get out of his grasp. Sargon shoved him back up against the wall, his lips curling menacingly. She didn't want to see what came next. Instead, instinctively, she pulled her staff off her back and poked one end into Sargon's ribs from behind.

"Leave him alone," she said, her voice as dark as she could make it. Sargon turned his head only, acknowledging her but not really looking at her, moving neither his forearm from the man's throat nor his blade from his face.

"This doesn't concern you," he said, dismissively. The blonde man looked at her over Sargon's shoulder, an indecipherable mix of emotions passing over his features.

"I don't know will you two are quarreling about," Rey said, "but I'm quite sure it's not worth killing a man over."

Sargon made a tsking noise with his tongue, as if he were disappointed that Rey had not left yet, and then pushed away from the blond man and whirled toward her.

Rey didn't have to think. A lifetime of streetfighting and a year of intensive Jedi training insured that. With the end of the quarterstaff already closest to Sargon, she smacked the vibro-blade out of his hand, and with the opposite end knocked him across the face. She spun the quarterstaff around and jabbed him as hard as she could in the stomach. He gave an audible "woof" noise and began to double over in pain. She brought the staff back down onto his shoulders, laying him out face first in the street. She put the point of her staff between his shoulder blades and pressed down with both hands.

"I said leave him alone," she said, as he lay at her feet.

"All right, all right," Sargon said, attempting to raise his hands and surrender. Rey straightened up, taking pressure off the staff to allow him to rise to his knees and then to his feet.

"Go," Rey said sharply. Sargon gave a glance at the blond man then disappeared into the crowd.

Rey leaned on her staff and looked at him. It had all happened in a matter of seconds; plenty of people on the street around them hadn't even seen what happened. The caravan had moved on, and the intersection cleared. Lump, momentarily distressed over losing sight of her, rejoined her and gave her a disapproving series of grunts.

"Thanks for that," the blond man said.

"What the hell was that exactly?" she asked. Only now did she notice that he was wearing clothing a good bit nicer than most of the other people on the street. A billowing, sky-blue, satin shirt was covered largely by a fine leather jerkin, with a gold embossed pattern pressed into it all around the edges; his trousers, whatever they were made of, had a soft sheen to them, and they were tucked into dark black leather boots. His hair was carefully combed, except for where it had been rumpled by Sargon, and he had dark blue leather gloves on his hands, one of which gripped a leather satchel. He did indeed look out of place on this street corner. Rey eyed him suspiciously. "Are you a smuggler or a spice dealer or something?"

A smile flickered nervously across his lips. "No, actually, the problem is precisely that I am not any of those things."

Rey sighed. He was going to be that kind of person. Okay, fine.

She shook her head and put her staff back into its holster across her back. "Whatever. You're welcome."

She nodded at Lump, encouraging them to move on back toward the Falcon

"No wait," the man said as they begin to turn their backs on him. "My name is Alik."

Rey turned back toward him, squinting slightly. She waited for him to finish his thought. Lump gurgled disapprovingly beside her; she glanced up at him, unable to disagree.

He was stumbling, thinking quickly. "Where are you two headed?"

_None of your business,_ Lump said, protectively.

It just so happened, however, that the truth was much more unpleasant than any fiction Rey could think of – just the kind of place that no one in their right mind went to willingly. "Tatooine," she said.

"Tatooine?" Alik repeated. "Well that's perfect. That's where I'm headed myself. Perhaps I could get a ride with you."


	16. Chapter 16

Lump did not like the idea of taking on a passenger. Rey wasn't crazy about it either, but she could not share in Lump's suspicion, only because she was able to keep close tabs on their guest in a way he could not. Lump typed in the coordinates on the ship's navi-computer and they lifted off from the docking bay.

"Those are not the coordinates for Tatooine," Alik said, looking down.

_We're obviously trying to avoid being tailed_, Lump said._ I would think you'd be familiar with that._

Rey glittered up at him mischievously. "I know, right?"

"Wait," Alik said. "You can understand Wook-ese?"

Rey rolled her eyes about as hard as she ever had. "I can understand him just fine, because he's speaking Basic just like you or I. I don't happen to speak Shyriiwook, but at least I have manners."

"Whatever," Alik said, sitting down in the copilot's chair. "I'm just glad to be getting out of there. Awful place."

"That's my seat," Rey said. He toodt up quickly and moved to the back row. He had the decency now to keep his mouth shut. Rey sat down in her spot beside Lump, and looked over his work on the computer. They rose quickly out of atmosphere and jumped easily into hyper space. It was a relatively short journey to the next system, then a slightly longer one to the one after that. "Look, I'm gonna go in the back. You boys be nice."

She ignored the appalled look on Alik face as she shut the door to the main room behind herself.

With the Force, it was easy to untwist the metal around the lock on the smuggling compartment. She lifted out her bag, which contained all that she owned in the world: a couple of dresses that Malla had made for her from rough homespun scraps around the house; the clothes she'd been wearing when she left Ajan Kloss, too dazed to pack anything else; three lightsabers, Luke's, Leia's, and her own; and the sacred Jedi texts she had taken from Ahch-To. She reached in one slender arm to pick up the text she read most often, a guidebook for Jedi living, whose language was modern enough that she could understand it well.

The door from the cockpit slid open and Alik emerged. "I was just gonna go to the refresher," he said, as he saw her kneeling protectively over her pack.

"No, you weren't," Rey said. "You're lying."

"You're right," he replied, sitting on the bench near the dejarik table. "I don't think your friend likes me much."

"I don't like you much either," she said under her breath.

Alik sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I made you take me with you. I didn't know what else to do and you at least seemed like you weren't going to kill me."

"Which makes me wonder," Rey said, closing up her bag, taking care he did not see what was within. "Why _was_ that guy trying to kill you?"

"I wasn't being very cooperative." Alik's careful, patrician accent was one she couldn't quite place. It was clear, however, that he felt he was entitled to ask questions without answering any himself.

"That's quite obvious," Rey replied. "If you're going to come with us, you're going to have to tell me what your business _is_."

He looked at her, considering her very carefully. "I suppose I owe you that," he said, resigned. "I'm an arts dealer."

"That guy wanted to kill you over… art?"

"Perhaps it sounds silly to somebody like you," he said glancing down at her rough spun brown dress and hose. "But where I'm from, we take art very seriously. People pay a lot of money for beautiful things from all over the galaxy."

_This guy_, Rey thought to herself. It was becoming a little clearer to her why Sargon had not felt bad about threatening his life.

"I really don't believe that that guy was interested in artwork," she said, meeting Alik's eyes with a steely glare.

"You're right there too," he said, after a moment. "I travel all over, and I have pretty high security clearance. His boss wants to make me pack a little something extra with the artwork when I travel."

Rey quickly put that together. While he could've been talking about any number of kinds of contraband, the fact that he was traveling so lightly, without a ship of his own, made her think that Sargon was trying to get Alik to carry spice.

Plague of the galaxy. She knew as many people who had died for spice, either to get their hands on it or because they had too much of it, as had died of violence on Jakku.

She liked him just a little bit better then.

"Where are you really trying to go?"

He shrugged. "At the moment, I'd be glad to just get rid of what I'm carrying and go home."

"And where is that?"

"Naboo."

Naboo. She had her own ties to that system, and she had no interest in pursuing them. "We'll take you as far as Tatooine, and that's it."

"Look, I know what you're thinking."

"I doubt that very much."

"You're thinking about the Emperor." Just that word struck her like a blow to the chest with a quarterstaff. Could he see it in her, the darkness? "I promise you, we're not like all like that. In fact, we're nothing like that. Naboo is a very peaceful planet, even more so since we started making new treaties with the Gungans. We're focused on the arts, and we do not tolerate sorcery."

Sorcery? Is that what he thought of people like her?

The contents of her pack weighed suddenly very heavily in her lap. She stood up quickly, holding the bag in her two arms against her body. "We'll take you as far as Tatooine. You're welcome to get off on any planet between here and there, but that's as far as _we're_ going."

Alik was surprised by her sudden icy sharpness. "Yes. Sure. I completely understand. Thank you for the ride."

She picked up her bag and moved to the very back of the cabin, into a little nook, as far away from Alik as she could get. She pulled out her book and laid it over her knees. It was a guide to using the Force, collected wisdom of Jedi sages through the centuries. She did not know, of course, exactly when any of the books have been written, but her literacy had been limited for so long to practical matters, like mechanical repairs, and a book of instructions felt so much more comfortable than the others. One or two of the books in fact, seemed so arcane that she could hardly make sense of them. Without Leia to help her stumble through, much of that text was lost to her.

"Listen," Alik said, suddenly near her, having found her hiding place. "I am an ass. Can we please start over? I'm Alik."

She looked up at him, feeling suddenly vulnerable with her book of _sorcery_. But his face was so earnest; she could feel his remorse. She sighed. "I'm Rey. He's Lump."

"Your mate?" Alik asked.

"More like my brother," Rey said, trying to hide her slight flicker of horror at that thought. Alik nodded.

His eyes caught sight of the book in her lap. That's a beautiful text," he said. "I work with a lot of rare books. Would you let me –"

"It's not for sale," she replied, even more quickly than she meant to. Alik was unfazed.

"No, I wouldn't imagine so. But I always love to look at a thing of beauty."

"No."

He thought about that for just a second. "All right then. I guess I'll just go… wait over here till we get to Tatooine."


	17. Chapter 17

He didn't have to wait more than a few hours. They arrived into Tattooine airspace, but without a central flight control, Lump could only choose a settlement at random to aim for. He hailed the local hangar, and a crackly voice responded. "We have room for you," said the disembodied voice on the other end. "But no in-and-out privileges. And no sleeping on board. We don't take no trouble here."

That seemed reasonable enough, so he accepted the docking bay assignment and landed the Falcon.

"This is your stop," Rey said to Alik as the ship settled down. He nodded. It was clear that Alik didn't like the thought of leaving, but what else could he do?

"Thanks again," he said, and he picked up his satchel and made his way down the boarding ramp and out of the hangar. Lump snorted after him and Rey tried to ignore it. Alik had only been trying to make a connection; Rey wasn't really interested in making friends with a man from Naboo, but she didn't feel the tick of annoyance with him any more. He'd done as he'd said he would and left her alone on the flight, and now he quietly left her and Lump behind, retreating into the town. She was almost – _almost – _sorry for him to go.

Rey opened up her pack and took out the clothing, laying it down over the benches in the main room. She chose one book of the several and put the rest into the compartment under the floor. There was no need to take those with her. She hung her blaster and her own lightsaber on her right hip and put Luke and Leia's on her left. Over it all she drew her camouflaged poncho and lay the hood over her braided hair. Then she put her canteen of water, a nutriment bar, and the one book into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.

The two of them disembarked, and Lump locked the Falcon up tight.

"Two credits a night," said the rough-looking human man who kept the hangar.

"One now and one when it's still here in the morning," Rey countered, briskly. The man nodded, after a moment, and accepted the coin she removed from her pocket. She and Lump moved out into the street and the burning light of the twin suns. It was nearing the end of the day, but it was _hot_ out still. To Rey's dismay, it reminded her more of Jakku's Niima Outpost more than she had hoped.

She led her companion toward a market trader under a tent. He was human, but his skin was deeply wrinkled from the sun and the desert winds. She'd met him a thousand times before in her life, beaten down by hard living in a hard place. The man wore a light-colored robe that reflected the suns' rays and covered him well, a good adaptation for a place like this. His head was covered with a faded orange cap, underneath which his eyes shone warmly.

"Do you know the Skywalker farm?" she asked him.

"Skywalker?" he repeated, thoughtfully. "Can't say that I do. Doesn't sound like a name from these parts." Rey nodded; they'd chosen this spot randomly because she didn't know anything more specific about where Luke had grown up. Was it even on this hemisphere of the planet?

"Thanks," she said anyway.

"You know," the old man said, "If you're new here, you should know to be careful for the Sand People."

"Thanks," she said again, appreciating the warning.

"And the Jawas," he said. "And the sarlaccs."

Rey felt her brow furrow in concern. "Okay, thanks." She and Lump exchanged a look of worry.

They wandered around the marketplace, which was more lively than any market where she'd grown up. No one had every heard of a moisture farm owned by the Skywalkers; most people denied knowing anyone by such a name at all. To one or two, it seemed to ring a bell, and one woman even asked if a Skywalker hadn't been a famous general in the Clone Wars. Rey had to agree that yes, one had been, but after that the woman still didn't know where the farm might be.

They walked and asked everyone who would give her the chance to ask them. At one point, Rey felt a tiny hand lift the corner of her poncho; she looked down to see a small Rhodian child attempting to pick her pocket. She reached out with one hand and the child's hand froze; Rey gripped it in the Force and held the child still. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said, and then she released the child so that it ran, crying, back into the crowd.

As dusk began to settle on the town, the traders packed up their goods. Rey and Lump bought a bit of food for dinner just as the seller was getting ready to go home. He gave them the meat raw and told them to cook it themselves, as it was too late to start up his fires again. Then he was gone, and Lump and Rey moved out into the edge of the desert.

He kept brushing at his fur as sand became stuck in it. A child of the jungle, Lump hated the feeling of sand under his feet and gritty in his fur. Rey could only smile; she didn't even notice as it encroached into her hair and clothes. Her entire lifetime had been spent in sand.

She wrapped her bag around itself in an attempt to make a pillow, with the book in the very center, her poncho laid out flat on the ground. When she turned back to Lump, she found that he'd lit a fire. A quick bolt of panic ran through her and she reached out with the Force, snapping her fingers and extinguishing the flame.

"Everyone will see the fire," she said to Lump. "It's not worth the risk."

_How are we going to cook the food? _Lump asked, with real concern. _I'm not an animal; I'm not going to eat it raw._

Rey sighed. If there was one good thing about decades-old Imperial portions, it was their utter lack of need for cooking. She touched the cut of meat with just her fingertips and closed her eyes, letting energy flow out of her and into the food. When she opened them, it was browned and done, and she offered it to Lump, who ate.

She could not help but wonder just who, exactly, were the Sand People, or what was a sarlacc, but she stretched out with her feelings and could sense not another sentient being nearby them. Only when she felt safe did she eat her ration for dinner, setting the little leftovers aside for morning. Though she didn't feel terribly tired, Rey did feel the weight of her task. It was a bit of a fool's errand, she knew, finding the one small moisture farm where Luke had grown up on this big, dry planet. She stretched herself out on top of what had to be her bed and let herself think, for the first time in a long time, about the stars above: the Jedi of generations past, guiding her. Were they out there? Or were they, like the rumors of monsters in the night, just a figment of her imagination – a product of her deep desire not to be alone in the galaxy?

Rey didn't realize she was falling asleep until she opened her eyes to see it was daybreak. Lump was already awake, nibbling the last bits of meat off last night's leftovers.

_Sorry,_ he said, when he realized what he'd done.

"It's all right," she said, even as her stomach rumbled. She'd make do with her nutriment bar rather than pay for more food. They needed to conserve their credits to get themselves out of here when they were done.

She packed up their things and put her hood back over her hair. There was no reason for anyone on Tattooine to know her, and she wanted to keep it that way. She was just a scavenger again, a desert mouse, nobody.

"There's no point in going back to that settlement," she observed. She gestured over to a nearby hill, where a collection of tents stood in the morning sun. "Maybe we can try that one before we go back to the Falcon."

Lump had no better ideas, so they set out. The Skywalker farm had to be out there, somewhere, and she meant to find it. The sand was still relatively cool under their feet, and Rey was grateful for that. Lump was not graceful on the shifting sand, slipping and sliding, while she moved with ease.

He fell behind her, but only slightly. Perhaps the farm was just over the hill; she could find Luke's childhood home and return his lightsaber and Leia's to their ancestral land. She would bury them together, side by side, as they'd come into the world. She would honor them and ask them to be proud of her.

Lump's scream broke into her thoughts. Rey spun around, nearly losing her footing on the shifting sands.

He was gone.


	18. Chapter 18

To disappear an entire Wookiee is no mean feat. Rey felt panic rise up in her. _No, no, no, no. _She whirled left and right, horribly aware that there was no one in sight. Then she drew in a breath and reached out with the Force, searching the sands for her friend, and was astonished to feel him just beneath her.

She took a few steps forward and found that the sand sloped strangely. At the bottom of the slope was a – a mouth? Huge tentacles crawled and flailed, as if it sensed she was near and wanted to devour her. The teeth around the mouth were sharp and many-rowed. Reflexively, she jumped back. It was like a creature from the stories, nothing she'd ever seen in her life – and Rey had seen a lot of incredible things.

Nothing to be done about her own fears. She stepped forward again and drew her lightsaber from her hip. She ignited it, the blade gold and shining against the sun. She spun the saber once with a flourish and then again, as a tentacle stretched out toward her. The sickening _chop_ sound it made as her saber sliced through the tentacle was … unusual. In the back of her mind, she remembered that it was the first time she'd used her own blade in combat.

The creature let out a scream of pain, a piercing sound that made her skin crawl. But it retracted its stump and she was able to creep forward, just a little. She sucked in a sharp breath and plunged her saber down into the creature below her. Another shriek, like the sound of death itself. Rey was on her knees now, holding the blade in place with both hands as the creature writhed in pain.

"You give him back!" she shouted, though she knew perfectly well that this creature was not sentient and did not speak Basic. "Right now!" And she wiggled her blade back and forth a bit for emphasis.

Just as suddenly as he'd vanished, Lump came flying up from the toothy maw, clearing the razor fangs, and landed with a thud on the sands. The creature then began to slip back into its burrow. Rey extinguished her lightsaber and the creature disappeared entirely from sight, the sand crumbling back down into the hole where it dwelled.

She scrambled over the sand to her friend's side. His fur had patches of thick goo stuck in it, but he seemed, overall, unharmed. Lump let out a long string of curse words, many of which she'd never heard before, before he ran out of breath and could only lie on his back in the sun, panting.

_I hate the kriffing desert_, he managed, at last.

And what else was there to say to that, except, "Me too, buddy."

After a while, they collected themselves. Lump rubbed sand ruefully into his fur to abrade out the digestive juices, which had begun to stink under the warming sun.

The small settlement on the hill was little more than a few tents indeed, and no one had any more idea who the Skywalkers were there than they had in the larger outpost. Rey was disappointed, but mostly in the fact that she had literally risked Lump over such a small reward. She found herself looking over at him much more than usual, just to be sure he was still there, and she made him walk in front of her so she could keep her eyes on him.

They made it back to the original settlement and to the Falcon. _Still there, _Lump observed, with a bit of surprise. She paid the hangar owner his second credit and they left the little town with a _woosh_.

The Falcon rushed over the bare desert, skimming over the open sand and leaping over rock outcroppings. Lump was a fair pilot, Rey knew, and he enjoyed the chance to test out his skills in an area devoid of the trees and teeming life of his homeplanet, where care was always needed. They passed over a tiny village of strangely dressed people, wrapped head-to-toe in long garments; perhaps these were the Sand People they'd been warned against. They did not seem friendly, or happy about the ancient Corellian freighter invading their lands.

When they had crossed the barren desert and dipped over the horizon, when they were far enough from where they started that Rey felt it was worthwhile to begin asking her questions again, she asked him to settle the ship outside of town.

Lump shook his head. _Dad said only in ports and hangars._

"That's crazy. We only have so many credits, and we don't know how long this is going to take us." Rey could feel the credits in her pocket lightening even as she spoke.

_There are Jawas out here,_ he replied, with earnestness. _Do you know what they do to nice ships?_

"Good thing we don't have one of those," she retorted. But she didn't mean it. Of course a planet with an active Jawa scavenging presence was not a safe place to leave the Falcon out in the open. There was too much value in the old bird, too many memories. It had been Han's and now it was Chewie's, and it had carried them on so many missions and adventures. The ship seemed to hum with memory, a story of its own. And a part of her always kept hoping that she'd come across some scrap of thing that had been Ben's; she had nothing physical of his but his father's ship, which wasn't even hers, but perhaps somewhere there was a child's scrawl on a wall, "Ben Solo was here."

In any case, Jakku hadn't been crawling with Jawas so you could leave a ship sitting out and protect it yourself if you really wanted to; a well-hidden treasure would stay buried for years, untouched. On Tatooine, apparently, that was not the case. She'd have to part with a few more credits to keep the Falcon safe.

They landed and left the Falcon in a docking bay, just on the edge of town. If the last place had been a busy trading hub, this was nearly a city, with permanent structures erected in almost-neat lines, forming streets where blurgs and dewbacks trudged along with packs on their backs or pulling wagons or carrying riders. Sentient beings from all over the galaxy rushed around and went about their business, buying and selling goods and services. It was loud.

An open-air market sat in the center of town, with vendors of all sorts of goods. Lump went off on his own to find some dinner – there seemed to be no end to his appetite – and they agreed to meet back at the hangar in an hour's time.

Rey asked around after the name Skywalker. She knew she had to be careful; there was no way to know when she might come across someone who did in fact know a Skywalker and didn't want to talk about it. It felt like overkill to be wearing three lightsabers, like all she needed was a good breeze to reveal her secrets, and yet at the same time it felt good to have such a collection of history in her hands as she searched.

She stopped at a shop where a peculiar alien seemed to be in charge. He – she could only assume it was a _he - _was not of a species she knew, but he was a short humanoid with tight-cropped, purple hair and large black eyes. Long, slender fingers, four on each hand, rested on the counter as he leaned against it out of the sun.

"Excuse me," she began, as politely as she could. "Do you know of a place around here owned by someone named Skywalker?"

His black eyes focused on her slowly, as if he were surprised she had addressed him. "Skywalker?" he repeated, meditatively. "Hmmm. Can't say that I do."

She nodded her thanks and began to walk off, when he spoke again.

"But my droid Zed might," he said. "Zed! Zed, come out here."

A protocol droid, painted a pale, metallic pinky-purple, emerged from inside the shop. It was an ancient looking thing, many models old, perhaps from the Old Republic. It had been repaired so many times over the years that only the torso and head were original parts, and whole thing had been painted over multiple times. Surely any design would fade quickly in the sun and sandy breeze of a desert outpost like this one; Rey had seen it many times. Servo motors whining from a lack of good care, the droid turned toward its master, awaiting instructions.

"Zed's been here a long while," said the shopkeeper's tinny voice. "Ask her if she knows."

Rey looked Zed in the eye – there was no reason not to be kind, even if she was just a droid – and asked. "Do you know anyone named Skywalker?"

Zed's eyes lit up just little bit. "Why, yes, madam, I believe I do. There is a farm -"

"That's enough!" the shopkeeper snapped, pressing the controller to Zed's restraining bolt. He hadn't expected Zed to know, but now, Rey realized, that information wasn't going to come without a price. "You want to know, you buy the droid."

She sighed. "How much?"

"Forty credits," the shopkeeper said.

"Forty credits?" Rey stammered. "That is exorbitant!"

"Do you want the droid or not?" he asked with a shrug.

"Twenty." Rey squared her shoulders, defiantly. For a brief second, she considered using a simple mind trick, but of course, that would just be stealing.

"How about thirty?" said a voice behind her. Rey turned, and was both surprised and not surprised to see Alik.

"I just cannot get rid of you," she said, incredulous.

"Do you want the droid or not?" Alik asked her, in the same tone as the shopkeeper, teasingly. Rey sputtered in frustration.

"Forty," the shopkeeper said, now speaking to Alik.

"Oh, come now," Alik replied, reaching into his pocket. "Take the thirty and be glad for it. That creaky old thing isn't worth ten." He held out thirty credits to the shopkeeper. Rey's eyes followed his hand and the money as the man took it. "There now," Alik said with a nod. "See? Shiny."

"Where did you get all that money? Rey asked him as the shopkeeper begin to adjust the droids restraining bolt.

"An obliging Hutt was interested in making a purchase."

"Obliging Hutt," Rey repeated, derisively. She was fairly sure there was no such thing. Alik shrugged.

"What do you want with the droid anyway?"

"He's got some information that I want." She was feeling compelled to be cagey.

"What kind of information?"

"I hardly see how that's any of your business," she said. He shrugged again.

"Well, seeing as it's now my droid, I think that it is my business."

They began walking away from the shopkeeper, the droid following obediently. Rey simply could not believe it.

"How did you find me?"

He laughed now. "I think the question is, how did you find me? We're on the opposite side of the planet from where you left me."


	19. Chapter 19

Alik was still dressed regally, though the contrast between his and the sun-conscious garments of Tatooine was even sharper than it had been when they'd found him. He'd lost the elegant attaché he'd been carrying, though Rey assumed the Hutt had purchased that along with whatever was inside it, and he was developing a five-o'clock-shadow, albeit faint and only visible in the sun given the fairness of his hair. Apparently he was now flush with cash and he had no visible marks on his body, so she imagined he was telling the truth that he'd made a sale rather than capitulated to some art-thief's blows.

"Now, now," Alik said to Lump, when the Wookiee caught sight of him again. Lump was, unsurprisingly, annoyed to see that Alik had somehow found his way back to them. She realized that Lump didn't trust him, and she couldn't blame him. Alik _had _kind of weaseled his way onto their ship. Then again, he'd purchased the droid and whatever information the droid contained, so Rey's irritation with him had to be tempered.

_Where did you come from? _Lump asked him. _Are you following us now?_

"No, he's not following us," Rey said, soothingly. "You're not, right?"

Alik looked stricken. "No!" he protested. Then, "Perhaps it's the Force bringing us together."

"Trust me," she said, wryly, ignoring his attempt at humor. "The Force is not this subtle."

Alik looked her out of the corner of his eye, and Lump only chuckled to himself. _Who's the droid?_

"I am 4198Z, at your service," Zed piped up.

"You understand him too?" Alik asked her, astonished.

"Sir, I am fluent in thirteen thousand -"

"Okay, quiet, Zed," Alik muttered. Zed was instantly silent. The droids Rey knew best wouldn't have responded that way at all; she thought of 3PO's certain indignance and wanted to smile. She did not.

"Zed is Alik's latest acquisition," Rey told Lump, gesturing over her shoulder, back at the droid. "She knows of some Skywalkers, but her previous owner wouldn't let her talk to me unless I bought her."

Lump chuffed excitedly. If Zed knew where to find the Skywalkers, then could get to the farm, bury the sabers, and get out of this stars-forsaken desert and back to the jungle like civilized beings.

"But _you _didn't buy her," Alik noted. He looked at Rey with a slight glint in his eye. "Did you."

She stared at him, trying to interpret his expression. The last thing she needed was another stupid man trying to trade for sex. She was never going to be desperate enough for that, not as long as she could fight and take care of herself. It would be easier still, of course, to simply use the Force to compel him to ask Zed for the location of the Skywalker farm, or just to beat it out of him. Perhaps, use the Force to beat it out of him.

She gave her head a shake, clearing out those increasingly dark thoughts. _Fear leads to the Dark side_, she reminded herself. She must not become so focused on her plan that she forget why she was doing all this.

"What do you want, Alik?" she asked, at last.

He smiled, and the glint changed from flirtation to serious. "I want to come with you."

"Ugh," Rey sighed. "Absolutely not."

"No adventure, no droid," he said, his voice almost sing-song.

"Why would you want to come with us? You don't even know where we're going."

"I know that you're going _somewhere_, and I want to find out where." _No adventure, no droid. _

Rey lowered her voice, hearing her master's voice in her head. "Adventures are for children's stories. I've seen real war and felt real loss. You want what doesn't exist. It will not turn out the way you think."

Alik paused, seeming momentarily chilled by her words. For an instant, he saw her, facing down darkness, her failures, her guilt, her pain. And he said, "I want to help you."

Rey's nose wrinkled. Alik was some pretty face from a wealthy home, trading art – whatever that meant – and looking for excitement. Yet he'd already shown a willingness to be helpful, having purchased the droid without even knowing why Rey wanted it. _We can't help where we come from_, she told herself, and she knew it was true. His family's past wasn't his fault any more than hers was her fault. She closed her eyes, partly in frustration and partly because she didn't want to see Lump's face when she said "Fine. Fine! You can come with us. I'm not fighting your battles for you though."

Alik's silver-blue eyes danced and he smiled broadly. "Excellent! Zed, tell us where to find what she's looking for, will you?"

The pink protocol droid seemed to rouse from a resting state at her master's words. "I seem to recall someone named Skywalker living on a moisture farm to the west," she said, evenly.

"When was that, Zed?" Rey asked, feeling the sense of urgency rising back up in her heart.

"More than fifty years ago now, madam," Zed said, her voice falling now. Even droids knew that half a century was a very long time to a human. _Fifty years_. Anything could have happened between then and now: the farm might not even be left standing.

Rey paused her spiraling thoughts and did the math in her mind. Luke had left Tatooine not too long before the Empire fell; that would be some thirty years ago. At most, Luke had lived there just thirty-five years ago, which was better than fifty. The Battle of Jakku had happened just weeks after the Battle of Endor, and she knew well how much sand filled in a space since then – and how well sand preserved what it covered. If the farm was to the west, even filled in with sand, it was still discoverable.

"Can you take us there?" she asked the droid.

"I am a protocol droid, madam, built for household work and etiquette. I am not suitable for long treks in -"

Alik cut her off. "Show us, Zed."

"Yes, sir," she said, and she began walking toward the setting sun. He was comfortable giving orders, Rey realized, and familiar with how to control a refractory droid.

"Wait," Rey called. "How far away is this?"

The droid stopped and turned back. "Approximately a day's walk, not including rest breaks."

Rey looked up at Alik, waiting for him to intercede. He gave an exasperated sigh; Rey wondered if he realized that was the exact tone of exasperation that _he_ inspired in _her. _"Come back, Zed."

"We can take the Falcon," Rey offered.

"Excellent decision, madam," Zed said, crisply, returning to her master's side. "May I suggest that we wait until morning, sir?" she said, to Alik now. "It's quite an isolated area, and the open desert is not safe at night."

Rey couldn't argue with that, though she was quite sure that Zed was thinking mostly of herself being scavenged by Jawas than of the sentient beings being scavenged by Sand People. Alik was nodding, and for once it looked like Lump agreed with him.

"All right," Rey said, feeling the consensus of her companions. "Let's find a spot to set up camp."

"Camp?" Alik said, sounding a little bit scandalized. "Certainly not. There's a passable inn right in town; I stayed there last night and I'm sure they'll have a second room available."

"We can't afford an inn," Rey said, quickly; they were burning through the credits Chewbacca had so kindly given them and she needed to be able to get Lump home to Kashyyyk no matter what discomforts that meant.

Alik waved a hand dismissively. "Then you'll stay with me. My treat." With that, he started back toward the town, and Zed began to follow loyally.

"Hang on," Rey snapped at his turned back. First a droid, then a room; staying with a strange man overnight seemed a little too much like a familiar recipe for trouble. Alik looked at her for a moment, as if he were waiting for her to finish asking a question. Realization dawned on him belatedly and he opened his mouth to speak, but found himself speechless.

"Entirely up to you, of course," he stammered, after a moment. "It's my pleasure to be able to provide for new friends, but if you'd rather sleep out here -"

Lump interrupted him with a roar. He, for one, did _not_ want to sleep outside in the sand again. With a Wookiee on her side, she reminded herself, there was little room for anything to go wrong, at least where this was concerned. Rey gave a reluctant nod and all four of them headed back into town and to the inn.


	20. Chapter 20

They moved quietly in the dusk of the twin suns, seeking to draw no attention to themselves. Rey felt good, like she'd finally achieved something on this quest she'd set for herself. She hoped that Luke and Leia would appreciate it all, would somehow see her efforts to honor them, even though they could no longer be here to guide her.

Their little party passed by a midnight blue Zabrak, cleaning his teeth with a dagger. Rey knew his type, the kind of man who looked for ways to look menacing. She would have liked to ignore him, but she could feel his intensity from across the street. He was watching them - no, he was watching Alik.

"Friend of yours?" she asked Alik, under her breath. The gold lightsaber tingled on her hip.

He'd seen the Zabrak too and was actively trying not to pay attention to him. "Probably one of Artess' men," he whispered back. "He's got fingers everywhere."

Though Rey did not know this Artess, she was quite sure she wanted no part of him. "Does he know you're with us?" she asked, keeping her eyes on the Zabrak as they went past him and turned the corner.

The glitter returned to Alik's eye. "Am I with you?"

"As far as your friend needs to know, yes," she replied, ignoring his implication. A slight smile fluttered over him as he turned his face away to look over his shoulder to see if the Zabrak was following them. Despite herself, Rey let herself return the smile behind his back.

Still, she didn't feel comfortable just leaving the Zabrak out there somewhere where her things were. As they neared the hangar, she asked Lump to wait for her and she stepped inside to get her bag. It was heavy with all eight books, but carrying that wright felt quite reassuring.

She hadn't quite reached the doorway again when she heard Lump's roar. She quickened her pace and rounded the doorframe to see the Zabrak, knife in hand, squaring off with the Wookiee.

"Doesn't concern you," the Zabrak hissed at him.

"Lump!" she called out, her blood running cold. Lump simply gave another roar and drew his bowcaster. The Zabrak obviously had no idea what kind of damage such a weapon could do, or else he wouldn't have tried anything. He at least should have had a blaster if he was going to challenge a Wookiee.

The Zabrak raised his hands in a mocking display of surrender. "Tell your friend there that he needs to think about his future," he said.

Only now did Rey look at Alik, who was standing against the wall with Zed. He looked perfectly horrified by the situation, but kept his eyes on the intruder. The Zabrak looked away from Lump and right at Alik. "Consider what you're doing," he said. "Artess isn't going to give up."

She watched Alik take a breath and straighten his back. "He's wasting his time, and yours."

"Heh," the Zabrak scoffed. She wondered if it was time yet to draw her saber, but instead she settled her fingers on the blaster. "You have no idea the kind of profit you can make with Artess' organization."

Rey knew what Alik was going to say before he said it. "I'm not interested in your profit."

"Then you're a fool," the Zabrak said, as he lunged toward Alik, dagger outstretched. Lump pulled the trigger of his bowcaster and Rey could almost see the bolt fly through the air and then sink into the Zabrak's thigh. He gave a roar of pain and surprise and crumpled to the floor. She thought again about when Chewie had shot Ben when Ben killed Han. She'd been glad to see its damage then, but Ben was so much stronger than this Zabrak that he hadn't let it stop him but rather used the pain to fuel his rage. The Zabrak lay on the ground, whimpering.

_Who's the fool?_ Lump asked him, re-holstering the bowcaster. They left him lying there in the dusty street and let Alik lead them to the inn. Alik scurried along ahead of them, obviously disturbed by what had just happened, and Zed struggled mightily to keep up with her master. Rey and Lump followed behind, weapons ready, though Rey was quite sure they were no longer being followed for now.

"They're getting bolder," Alik said, as he let them all into his small room. It was actually better than Rey had assumed it would be, clean and swept up, with both bars and curtains on the windows. Two beds, one in each side of the room, were made up with clean linens. A private refresher room stood ready. She was impressed: except for a brief visit on the Supremacy, it was one of the nicest places she'd ever been.

She bolted the door shut and leaned a chair against it. Then she moved the char and dragged one of the beds in front of it for good measure.

"We'll sleep in shifts," Rey said. "It will be fine." She thought of the refresher, knowing she hadn't had a bath since they left Kasyyyk. She had gotten used to the feeling of being clean and she missed it.

"Shifts," Alik repeated. "And what good am I going to be when it's my turn? I'm hardly going to shoot someone."

She couldn't help but smile just a little bit. "How have you survived this long?" Lump lay down over the bed by the door and closed his eyes; he took up the entire thing and his feet dangled over the edge, but he didn't seem to mind. She drew the blaster from her hip, careful not to disturb the lightsaber, and handed it to him. He took it, reluctantly, and held it like it might bite him. "Point it at the bad guy and pull the trigger," she said, nodding at it in his hands. "Set it to stun if it makes you feel better."

She moved past him toward the refresher. "You have first watch."

With the door shut behind her, she finally slipped the poncho over her head, folded it, and laid it on the floor. She unclipped the excessive number lightsabers from her hip and laid them on the fabric of the poncho, each beside the others in neat, reverent lines. She rolled the fabric of the poncho around the sabers, concealing them, before stripping off her own clothes, dusting them down, and turning on the sonic refresher.

She washed quickly and incompletely, aware that a man she really didn't know was just outside the door with a blaster she'd handed him herself, and pulled on the trousers and top Malla had made for her. The trousers were of a thick fabric worn soft by many years of use, once a very dark brown, almost black. They reached from her ankles to her waist, and closed with a drawstring of rough-spun twine. The top was the color of the sand outside, fitted close to her body and with full, loose sleeves. It closed with a wrap around the front over her breast, secured with tiny strings that she tied into bows. It was Malla's best work, the last of the three garments she'd made for her. She plaited her hair down her back and tied the end with one of the soft orange ribbons from Malla.

At last, Rey picked up the bundle containing her lightsabers with one hand and her clothing with the other and stepped out of the refresher. Alik was seated on the edge of the second bed, her blaster over his knees. He was watching the door behind the sleeping Lump with glassy eyes, which he turned to her as she emerged. In the bare light of the hotel room, they seemed darker than they were. She realized, a little belatedly, that Alik was not dealing as well with the circumstances as she had assumed.

With a little sigh, Rey hung up her clothes on a hook on the wall to air out and she laid the bundle beside her bag, careful to avoid letting the sabers touch each other and make noise, alerting Alik to their presence; he didn't need any more reason to be upset.

Then she sat down beside him and took the blaster out of his hands. "Don't really like those things," he said, softly.

She nodded. "I can tell."

"I think," he said, "I think we've had very different upbringings."

She didn't answer that but set the blaster beside her, away from him. "Tell me about where you grew up."

"Naboo?" he said, surprised. His eyes cleared a bit at the word and he seemed grateful for the distraction. "It's a beautiful place. I think you'd like it."

Rey smiled. Despite her many adventures, she'd really seen very little of the galaxy. She ventured, slowly, "Do you have a family?"

He nodded. The color was returning to his face. "My mother is the regional governor. Actually, she's had a very illustrious career. Top of her class at the Imperial Academy -"

"Imperial Academy?" Rey felt a little bit of horror creep into her tone, even as she tried to listen attentively.

"It was a different time, you know," he said. "The Empire controlled everything, and Naboo was the Emperor's homeworld. It had a special place of honor among systems; it meant something to come from there. It was something to be proud of, at first." Rey's stomach twisted within her. Naboo was technically her own ancestral homeworld, and she felt no pride about it at all. "After the Empire fell, she stayed with it and became the New Republic governor. She works directly with the Queen sometimes," he said, speaking more quickly as he recovered himself.

"Do you have a father?"

"She's not interested in the power," he offered. Rey didn't respond to that. He sighed. "My dad's a teacher; my brother is too. Drake."

"But _you're_ an art merchant."

"Art is very important on Naboo," he said again. "And … I wanted to get out. See the galaxy."

"You wanted an adventure," Rey said, very quietly. Alik nodded. "It's not as good as you think."


	21. Chapter 21

What about you?" he asked her.

_Me what? _she started to ask, but then she realized what he meant. "They're all gone. Everyone but him," she said, nodding toward Lump, who slept on. Alik was silent for a little while, thinking about that. She thought to herself that being an orphan kind of made a lot of sense for her. So much darkness within her – who else could be with her? Without a family, who could understand her? _Ben did_ …

"Do you still want to see those books?" she asked suddenly, forcing herself to speak more brightly than she felt.

Alik blinked, surprised. Either he'd forgotten about them, which she very much doubted, or he had given up on getting to examine them. "I do." She went over to her bag and drew out two of them, the Jedi guide she carried with her most and its mate, both bound in a green-dyed, worn leather she could not identify.

Alik received the books with reverence, which pleased her. He was a bit too clever for his own good, yes, but he knew how to accept a change of subject and how to treat a treasure. Very gently, he opened the cover and looked down at the first page. It was brown from age, the gilt edge worn away almost to nothing. The lettering was hand-written in beautiful scrollwork, but Rey had never really been able to make sense of it. Leia had told her there would be time enough someday to read this one, but then time ran out and Rey was never really sure what to do with it.

He turned the page delicately, then the next; she watched him, and it was clear that he did indeed know what he was doing. He barely touched the pages, sparing them the oil of his fingertips, appreciating each word and margin note.

"I collect and sell fine artwork from around the galaxy," he said, not lifting his eyes from the book as he spoke to her. "The demand is highest for that. But I also find particularly fine garments for the Queen's household and, when I can, rare books. This one is exquisite."

While she knew little about rare books, she could only agree with his appraisal. He turned another page, and a thin sheet of paper popped up from the binding: a page of notes tucked here to spare some reader from writing on the pages themselves. There were several of them, tucked throughout the books. Some she read, others she saved for another day. This was one she had not examined before.

"Interesting," he said, turning the slip of paper over in his hands. She could see that it was a page entirely full of notes, written in a neat and clean hand; the margins held further markings and revisions. Most of the writing was strictly functional, full of abbreviations that only made sense to the writer, but a few sentences were written out in full, written by the same hand but in thoughtful, flowing script.

"I think it's my-" She wanted to say "master" but she managed to catch herself. "My friend, Luke's. These were his books."

"Hmm," Alik said, and he tucked it back in between the pages where it had come from. "This Luke had a keen mind to make sense of all of this."

"He was very wise," she said, reverently, a pang of guilt and grief clawing up her throat.

Alik pointed at the diagram on the page below him, at the three figures in elegant and ancient-looking robes, as he read. "In the World that lies between Worlds, all beings know the way of life." She looked at the page, at the enigmatic letters, and began to see, as he spoke them out loud, how they had morphed into their common aurebesh. He flipped through the pages like a fan blowing cooling air, and then closed it.

Alik held the book, weighed it in his hands. "Yeah," he said, appraisingly. "I don't know what it means, but that's what it says."

"The Jedi texts can be hard to understand without a master to guide you," Rey said, wishing for only the thousandth time that she had Luke or Leia still. "They say," she added.

"Maybe so, but this is not a Jedi text." Alik spoke lightly, as if what he said mattered very little.

She stared at him. "Of course it's a Jedi text," she sputtered. "Look at the cover. It's exactly the same as the guidebook on the Force and Jedi living."

He picked up the book in question and examined the binding. He held one book in one hand, the other in the other, and scrutinized them together. "Nope. Look here," he said. "This one's been rebound. Much older than the other. Probably from before the Old Republic."

Rey gaped. It had never occurred to her that there had been_ anything_ before the Old Republic, much less that she'd be in possession of a relic from that time.

"Worth a pretty penny if you wanted to-" He stopped, seeing the look in her eyes that said, very clearly, that these things were not for sale. "Well, you'd be a wealthy woman, anyway."

She could hardly believe it. It certainly explained why the text was so hard to read, if it contained language more than 10,000 years old. The Jedi must have held it sacred because it came from before even their time; it was truly ancient wisdom. She looked back and forth at the two texts in Alik's hands, trying to make sense of it. The Jedi way was, compared to this text, a modern innovation. Rules for living in a specific community, not eternal or universal knowledge. Rey felt like everything she had known, the solid foundation she'd built for herself, was a bit of a lie.

"Wake me in three hours," she said, and she took the Jedi guidebook and laid down on top of the bed. There was nothing else for Alik to do but pick up the blaster again and wait for his turn to sleep.

With her back to him, facing the wall, she took the Jedi guidebook from him and opened it to a familiar page. It was the chapter on attachment. "The Jedi should have no attachments." As stark and clear as day - yet the source of so much pain. If she was not to love, not to love Chewie and Malla and Lump and Ben, then she would never have come to where she now was. She could never not love them. If this was what it meant to be a Jedi, how she could choose that path?


	22. Chapter 22

She woke to find Alik's soft blue cloak spread over her like a blanket. Lump cooed softly at her and she picked her head up to see the two of them standing over her, daylight pouring in through the barred window. "It's morning," she said, looking at Alik. "I told you three hours."

He shrugged, a smile on his face. "You looked so peaceful," he said. "I got the Wookiee instead."

Lump gave a growl; she wasn't sure what that meant.

The book was still in her hand, she realized, as she sat up.

_Let's go get some food, _Lump said. She shook her head as her thoughts from the night before came back to her.

"You boys go ahead. Bring me back something." She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and saw the concerned looks on both their faces. "I'm fine! Just give me a chance to wake up."

Reluctantly, Alik and Lump left the room, and Rey settled herself on the floor, her legs crossed beneath her. "Be with me," she whispered, her old mantra. How she longed for guidance – for someone with authority to tell her how ridiculous she was being. She leaned into the Force, and felt it creeping up within her. The old calling, the shadow within her, the light that pierced the darkness. If any of the old masters heard her, those nameless, faceless voices that had given her so much hope and strength before, none appeared to her now. The only image that appeared before her mind's eye was that of Ben Solo, his sweet, handsome smile when she pulled him close to her and his heart was as full as hers. Was it a memory or something else? She could not say, but it was clear and solid as any vision she had ever seen, if ever the Force had given her one.

"Oh." She heard the sound escape her, though she was not certain she had made it. The old masters would have told her to let it go, to stop her mourning and let go of her attachments. She'd fallen in love – there was nothing to be done about that after the fact, but now it had been weeks and weeks and she still felt the hole in her. Now she needed to let go of him.

_If you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure_.

Luke's voice. She had pleaded for it, and it came to her. Or was this a memory too? Did it matter?

_The greatest teacher, failure is. _Another voice, one she did not know; a nameless master from a time long past. Not a memory, then.

What would master Skywalker have said to her now?

_Learn from your mistakes, _she told herself, even as she continued the chant_. Learn from theirs. _

But what still stood before her was only him, her other half, as she had seen him last: desperately disheveled, bruised and bloody, his eyes intensely searching. And, as if she were going mad, he whispered back to her, "Be with me."

Rey broke her meditation. Ben's face vanished and she was left on the floor of a worn-out hotel room, her legs crossed beneath, her tears streaming down her cheeks. Somehow she felt no wiser than she had before she'd let the Force take her, and much colder. She was still empty.

Before she could rise, the door swung open and Lump stood there, filling up the doorframe and blocking the light around himself.

_He's gone! _

Lump's voice was harsh and thick with anxiety. She leapt to her feet and looked up at him, total confusion and dawning understanding bleeding at once through her entire body. "Who's gone?" she stammered, even though she knew quite well.

_He was right there and then he wasn't,_ Lump wailed, shutting the door behind himself.

"Slow down," she said, as much to herself as to him. "Tell me exactly what happened."

_I was just paying the vendor and Alik was right behind me, and when I turned around, he wasn't, _he said again.

Rey knew that her words were nonsense but she spoke them anyway: "Maybe he just went to eat somewhere else." But as she looked around the room, she could see plainly that his cloak lay on the bed, his droid stood inert in the corner, and his purse lay with her things. It was still distended with credits. She lifted her hand to her forehead and tried to breathe.

She saw too that the second bed, the one where Lump had fallen asleep, had not been rumpled; no one had slept beneath the covers.

"Did he keep watch all night?" Lump nodded, coming to the same conclusions that she was but a moment behind. "He's exhausted and he stopped paying attention."

_He's going to die, _Lump said, with calm certainty.

"Yeah," Rey replied, in the same tone. There was no doubt at all in her that Artess' men had gotten him, and Alik was sufficiently cocksure that, given enough time in their presence, he would certainly say something to get himself killed. "We have to find him."

She knelt down and began stuffing her things into her canvas bag: books, clothes, and Alik's items as well, while Lump roused the droid. She unwrapped the lightsabers and tucked them in around her clothes, and pulled on the poncho, concealing her own two weapons beneath. There was no time even to make a plan; Artess' goons were several steps ahead of them, and she didn't even know where to begin the search.

"Where is Master Alik?" Zed intoned as she powered back up. Lump growled at her. "Gone? He couldn't have left _me_ behind." Zed was a weird little droid, Rey thought incongruent to the current situation. She was as annoying as any protocol droid in the galaxy but her loyalty to her master was, evidently, absolute.

Rey checked the room once more to be sure that they weren't leaving any traces of themselves behind and ushered her companions out the door ahead of herself. She shut the door and used the Force to break the lock; she felt a tinge of guilt as she did so, but, honestly, the longer she could hold off anyone from following them, the safer they would all be.


	23. Chapter 23

Lump took her and Zed back to the exact spot where he'd last seen Alik. It was amidst a row of food vendors, open tents with a variety of items for sale: smoky meats, desert fruits, and warm breads, their scents rising into the morning air, filling it with the call to eat. Her stomach turned; how could she eat when her friend had obviously been kidnapped?

_Friend?_ Yes, she supposed he was. And she had to find him.

"He was standing right here?" she asked Lump.

_I bought four skewers of roast bantha from that guy,_ Lump said, gesturing at one of the tents. _And he was right there, where you are._

She looked around herself. She could track through sand – she'd done it more times than she could count. But that was in the open desert of Jakku, where tracks could stay untouched for days. The sand beneath their feet here in this little city had been trod by dozens of beings already; there was no way to see what might have transpired half an hour ago. She sighed with frustration.

"Did he say anything? Call out?" She already knew the answer to that question, of course. Lump would have said if he'd heard Alik being taken – indeed, Lump would have intervened if he'd had the chance; for all he complained about Alik's presence in their company, he'd shot that Zabrak without a second thought when he'd threatened him. And Alik had been generous and helpful to their cause, and he was kind to them both, in his own, presumptuous way. Rey shook her head. "Maybe someone else saw something. Did you ask the bantha vendor?"

Lump gave a compliant grunt and turned toward the food tents. Rey scanned the space around this spot where Alik had stood. There was a tan stone building behind her, its tall wall unbroken by windows but supported by thick buttresses facing the street. A small dome capped off the building, and another building identical to it stood beside. There was a narrow alleyway between the buildings, wide enough for a humanoid to pass. On the far side stood a third building with heavy stone stairs leading up into a dark doorway. Above her, the rooves were no more than two stories up, a convenient place for a being to observe the street below. In short, there were dozens of places where Artess' men could have lain in wait.

Rey reached out with the Force, trying to draw some kind of information up from the ground itself. Which was foolish: she knew it didn't work that way. The Force emanated from life, not sand and stone. Only living beings could tell her anything. She examined the pedestrians as they passed by, searching for any hidden knowledge, any attempts to hide. There was nothing. The feeling in her heart contracted as she stopped stretching out to random strangers.

She looked down again. If there were no tracks in the sand to follow, at least there also did not appear to be any blood, human or otherwise. Surely that boded well: whoever had grabbed Alik had done so without drawing blood, giving him a better chance of still being alive right now. She drew in a shaky breath. She needed to be logical here. If one of Artess' men had seen Alik standing alone and taken the chance to grab him, then it was because they still wanted to force Alik to run spice for them while he went on his art-dealing ventures. There was no point in killing him without getting him to agree to that, at least until he'd exhausted their hope and their patience.

But if there was one thing Alik was really good at, it was exhausting other people's patience. "Alik, don't act like yourself right now," she breathed. "Give me a chance to find you first."

"If I may, madam," Zed piped up. Rey had forgotten she was even there, and she jumped a little when the droid spoke to her. Recovering herself, Rey turned to her, Zed's metallic mauve body shining brightly in the sunlight. "Master Alik purchased me because of my knowledge of this region. If you would tell me something about who you suspect of taking him, perhaps I might have some information that could help find him."

In her panic, Rey had not considered Zed's value, but of course Zed could be useful here. Or at least, she could try.

_No one saw anything suspicious, _Lump said, suddenly behind her. _But who knows? They could all be lying._

Rey turned and looked up at him. Her friend had definitely grown taller since she'd known him. His soft brown fur shimmered in the bright sun, his eyes shining down at her. Rey was more grateful than she could say that, in that moment, she was not alone. She had friends, here and even elsewhere, and finding Alik was a task that they could accomplish.

She looked at Zed. "Out of the street. I'll tell you what we know."

~/~/~

Standing in the alleyway out of the sun, Rey gave Zed the bare outline of what she knew about Alik's business – which was, admittedly, not much, but he clearly had a lot of knowledge about the materials he bought and sold, and he'd been able to secure a deal with a Hutt on a planet he didn't know in under a day. He was good at his job. No doubt that the gangsters wanted him using those connections for their own ends.

Rey shifted her bag on her shoulder, the weight of her Jedi texts heavy in the warming day. "The one in charge is called Artess, but I don't think he's even on this planet."

Zed listened in silence, waiting her turn to speak – again, Rey thought about how different she was from the Resistance droids, and she missed little BB8.

"So what do you think?" Rey asked her at last.

It took Zed a moment to respond. "I don't know anyone by that name, madam. But, if you're looking for a den of spice runners, there are several in this gloomy excuse for a spaceport."

Rey sighed. That bit of information was of dubious value; had she just wasted precious minutes telling the story to a droid?

"There are the Blue Lyleks who work mostly in the marketplace, and an Ugnaught who runs out of a cantina downtown. Some of them operate out of a building west of town," Zed continued, "Run by someone called Sargon."

_Sargon_.

Lump roared, triumph in his voice.

"Take us there, Zed," Rey said, a smile spreading on her face. They were going to find Alik after all.

Zed turned sharply on her heel and began walking away. Rey nodded up at Lump and urged him to follow. She ran her hand over her hip, checking on her gold lightsaber that hung there beside her borrowed blaster. She lifted the hood of her poncho over hair and smoothed the body of it over the weapons, readjusted her bag on her shoulder, and followed them into the street.

~/~/~

The spaceport's streets were filling as the twin suns rose into the sky, first one and then the other, pouring heat onto the arid ground. While she couldn't say it was her favorite sensation, it was at least familiar, and she felt comfortable moving freely under it. Zed made not one word of complaint – she tsked with concern over her missing master, but said nothing about the heat. Lump, however, was wearing a fur coat and seemed to feel it very much. There was nothing Rey could do to relieve his discomfort except try to think about what reward she could offer him when they returned with Alik. Perhaps he'd be so grateful for his rescue that he'd offer to buy Lump the services of a groomer of some sort.

Rey realized after not too long that they were slowing down. Lump fell behind to be the last in their little caravan; in short time, as they passed out of what could be loosely called civilization and into the open desert, he was looking warily all around himself, looking for tentacled beasts dwelling beneath the sand. She lost track of exactly how long they had walked, but she was very aware that there hadn't been a building for quite some time. It was just occurring to her that perhaps she should be more wary of the droid leading them, when a crumbling sandstone edifice appeared before them.

"Here we are, madam," Zed said, very pleased with herself. "The spice runner Sargon and his men use this as their primary hiding place, if the rumors are to be believed."

_Rumors? _Lump echoed, aghast. They had come all the way out here under the hot suns on the basis of rumors?

Rey gazed at the building. It was not unlike some of the building back in the spaceport, solid with a hint of a dome on top. Thick walls to keep the nighttime cool in and high ceilings to allow any heat to rise up and away from the inhabitants. While the buildings in town were mostly well-maintained, being inhabited dwellings, this one looked like it hadn't been looked after in some time. It needed repairs to its corners, which were worn down by years of blasting, sandy wind; sand crept up the wall facing that wind as no one had come by to sweep it down. In a few more years, it would be as completely reclaimed by the desert as the ruins she could just see around it.

"I can assure you, sir," Zed continued, and Rey was amused to hear her address Lump as "sir," "You will not find a more wretched hive."

"Well," Rey said, with finality. "I'll have to go see if that's where he is."

_I'm going with you, _Lump said. He drew his bowcaster.

"No, you're not," Rey replied, laying a hand on his weapon and pointing it down, harmlessly, at the sand. "I have no idea what's waiting for us in there and I can't put you at risk too."

_I'm here to protect you, _Lump protested. _My mother's life debt –_

"Does not oblige you to die for me. We agreed that you'd take me to the Skywalker farm and you will. Besides," she said, "I have the Force. I'll be fine."

Which was a little bit absurd, and she knew it even as she said it. No degree of power in the Force could exempt one from death. She knew that as bitingly as anyone ever had. Lump opened his mouth to argue further; she couldn't bear it. No more losses. No more.

"You will go back to the Falcon," she said, employing the mind trick. Lump's expression changed minutely: it was working. "You will go back to the Falcon with my things and keep them safe. We will meet you back here when you return."

_I'm going to go get the Falcon and bring it over here, _Lump said. Rey felt physically ill; what she was doing was _wrong_. Luke would have given her a growl; Leia would have given her a lecture; Ben would have – well, Ben would probably approve. But they weren't here, and she had to protect him. She could think of no other way to do that than to simply get him out.

"Take my things," she reminded him, handing over the canvas bag that contained the clothes Malla had made her, the texts, and the lightsabers. "Keep them safe."

_I'll meet you back here,_ Lump said, and he turned and headed back toward the spaceport.

"Follow the same path we took getting here," she called after him. "Be careful for sand beasts."

"Oh my," Zed said, with a familiar intonation that only made Rey's heart sink further. "That was very abrupt."


	24. Chapter 24

Rey looked at Zed. The droid, as much as droids can, looked very unhappy. "I can go by myself," Rey offered.

"Oh no, madam. Master Alik wouldn't leave me in a place like that, and I'm not about to leave him."

Where Zed had gotten that idea, Rey was not at all sure. It must simply have been her programming, that unflappable loyalty and commitment. But she was very grateful that, while she couldn't risk Lump's return home to Kashyyyk, she would at least have Zed with her when she entered the gangsters' den.

"Besides," Zed continued, "the farm you are looking for is not much beyond that ridge. You'll need me." The farm. Yes, she needed Zed. She definitely did. Rey nodded sharply at the droid and began walking toward the dilapidated building, keeping her head up and her chest out, trying to force herself to feel more confident than she did. It wasn't that she was afraid of a fight – certainly not. She was armed with a saber, a blaster, a staff, and the Force. She was afraid of what she might find when she went inside.

Only as she came upon it did it occur to her that simply striding up to a building in broad daylight, with no cover whatsoever, could easily have gotten her shot. Too late to fret over that now. She pulled the poncho over her head and left it crumpled on the sand; too much extra fabric was a liability in a fight, and the fitted top and trousers were just right. She stepped to the side of the doorway and pushed Zed up against the wall beside her, where anyone inside would not see them, and she listened for voices.

Muffled conversation could be heard, but only if she held her breath. She closed her eyes and tried to think about Alik, tried to determine if he were here and if he were still alive. Surely she would have felt it if he'd died already, as she'd felt so many other deaths? Yes, surely she would have. He was alive. She wouldn't allow herself to consider any other option.

As if he could hear her thinking about him, she suddenly heard a shout from a familiar voice. Actually, it sounded less like a shout and more like a grunt of pain, like someone being beaten. That was it: she could wait no longer to gather information.

Rey drew her blaster, cocked it, and held it vertically in her right hand. She jerked her head toward the open door, urging Zed to follow, and headed inside.

There was no one in the first room of the building. It was just a dark room, and it looked like it was used little. She scanned the room with her eyes, just to be sure that there was no one here, waiting for them. No beings were lurking behind the dusty furniture, so she kept moving. Silently, silently, she walked, placing one foot in front of the other, slowly, trying to avoid making noise and tipping off Sargon and his men to her presence.

Zed followed her, trepidatious and slow. She was making an effort to move as little as possible to keep her motorized joints quiet. Zed was in fact a remarkably thoughtful machine, diligent in her duties. Her sense of devotion to Alik was charming: it seemed she was willing to do anything to keep him safe, though she'd only met him yesterday. Rey felt a certain kinship with that sentiment.

With a sharp exhale to relax her lungs, she slipped around the doorframe. This room was larger than the antechamber they'd just passed through, with better lighting in the form of old, yellow lamps hung midway up the walls. Tables piled with stuff, broken chairs, and dismembered droids in grim piles lay everywhere. And though she'd never touched the stuff, on one countertop Rey saw dusty heaps of spice waiting to be measured and packaged. Spice, that ruined lives and made healthy people into zombies, that stole parents from children and wives from husbands, that threatened Alik and made him afraid.

Just beyond that stood Sargon and another human male, their backs to her and Zed. A stout Ugnaught and lanky Quor'sav hovered nearby. The Ugnaught held a vibro-axe across his body, as if ready to strike, but the Quor'sav merely watched the scene as if uninterested. To Rey's surprise, seated the wrong way on a tipped-over chair was the Zabrak Lump had shot the day before, a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his thigh and a cane clutched in his right hand. He looked like he wanted to use it as a cudgel against Alik, who stood in the middle of them.

Alik's right hand was chained to the bars on the wall behind him with a pair of binders. His hair, which had been neatly combed and arranged that morning, was a matted blob with red blood darkening to black in a streak amidst the blond. His beard had grown in more, increasing the haunted look on his face, and his eye was black and his lower lip split, a tiny trickle of blood starting down his chin. He wiped it on his shoulder, leaving a smudge on the fine cloth; it was not the only stain on his clothes, which were now dirty and streaked as if he'd been dragged through the sand before being splattered with his own blood. His left arm, the one not bound, clutched his side as if it hurt him.

"Gentlemen," Alik was saying through teeth clenched in pain, "I am quite sure that we can reach an agreement here -" The second human simply decked him in the jaw before he could finish.

The twinge of pity that plucked at Rey's heart was physically painful. He'd been beaten and chained up like an animal, with no chance to fight back – not that Alik was likely to do much fighting, she well knew. As she would have expected, he was still trying to talk his way out of this, and, as she would have expected, in this case it wasn't working. Alik didn't quite seem to grasp that and sputtered a bit of blood out of his mouth.

"Stop!" she shouted, leveling her blaster and resting her finger on its trigger. She pointed it squarely at the one who had just hit Alik; she wouldn't feel bad at all if her finger should slip.

Every one of them turned to look at her. Alik blinked, sort of stupidly, but then his vision focused and the astonished look that flickered over his face cleared to a broken smile. Rey let her eyes dash to his for just an instant, and she was reassured that he was, for the moment, all right.

"Release him and we'll both just leave," she said, as loudly and as clearly as she could. "It will be like this never happened."

Sargon scoffed. It had taken him a moment to recognize her, but now it was clear that he had placed her face as the woman who'd thrown him to the ground, humiliatingly, a few days before.

"A girl and a protocol droid," Sargon said, disdain dripping from his words. "That's who'll stick up for you. Guess the Wookiee couldn't be bothered."

At that, Rey's heart lifted. He had no idea what she was capable of. Couldn't even suspect it. To him, she was just a girl with a gun, a desert rat, nobody. He was very wrong.

Rey lifted her left hand and extended her index finger. She twirled it in the air and Alik's binders clicked open. He looked at his wrist, uncomprehending, but she turned her attention back to Sargon. She shook her head: he was a fool, and he was going to learn. She dropped the blaster and drew her staff from her back, smoothly, like the hundreds of thousands of times she'd done so before. She cracked it into the Quor'sav's head; he hadn't expected the blow and tumbled to the ground almost at the same moment the blaster landed.

Rey let the force of her swing carry her around into a forward spin, and she brought the staff down on Sargon's shoulder, dropping him to his knees. She felt the Ugnaught's approach behind her and jammed the staff backwards into his stomach. He gave a loud grunt as she titled the end upwards into him and then jerked it back a little more, shoving him away from her. The end of the staff still facing Sargon knocked him in the cheek, and the skin split instantly, blood leaping from the wound.

The Quor'sav was getting to his feet, so, using the Force, she reached out her hand and shoved him backwards. His feet dragged on the floor and he hit the spice-covered counter, kicking the drug up into a cloud around him with his feathers. A second gesture with her hand and he was back on the floor, flattened out and stunned. She pivoted on her right foot, turning away from the bloodied Sargon, to face the other human, the one who'd hit Alik. She knocked him hard with her staff, and then spun the staff around herself to block Sargon's attempted blow. Meanwhile, the Ugnaught had recovered himself enough to join in the fray, and Rey realized that she was going to have to fight all three of them at once.

She'd done it before, won an unfair fight. Harassing stormtroopers and over-eager drunks alike had received her blows, and that was before she knew how to use the Force. She swung the staff like it was a part of her, anticipating their movements with deft blows. She disarmed the Ugnaught, throwing the vibro-axe out of his hands with a mere swipe of her fingertips, and then leaping backwards to avoid Sargon's grasp. The fools couldn't touch her, she knew; they might get in a punch or a thrust here or there, but soon they'd be too tired to fight and that would be that.

The blaster shot, however, made them all stop. Rey watched as if the world slowed down, while the bolt crackled through the air and landed squarely in Zed's torso. Without so much as a scream, the droid burst into her component parts, violet metal spinning away in shards and bits.

Rey's lips parted in silent, agonizing protest. Then her brows furrowed. "No," she said, her voice a dark rumble in her chest that surprised even her. She turned to where the shot had originated, at the Zabrak who stood balanced on one leg, her own blaster clenched between his two hands.

White hot rage overflowed within her. She ignored Alik's horrified face, ignored the sudden look of panic on the Zabrak as she took a step toward him. She knew that she looked terrifying; she meant to use it.

The staff slipped out of her fingers and her right hand drew her lightsaber. She ignited the weapon, its blade humming menacingly, bathing her face in eerie golden light in the dim space. The others, Alik included, were rooted to their spots at the sight of it. A genuine lightsaber would have been shocking on its own, but its sudden appearance in her hand, the dark look on her face, and the powerful tightening of her muscles as she held it made for a chilling presentation.

Rey raised her left had again, stretched backward slightly toward the goons, and she froze them in place. She would not be disturbed. Her blade tilted to the side slightly, from vertical to perhaps sixty degrees, and she stalked toward the Zabrak. He still held her blaster, and, suddenly shaking, he turned it toward her. Her right hand still gripped the saber, and she turned her left hand to him. Palm facing him, she relaxed her fingers and touched them to the palm and the blaster dropped to the floor. The Zabrak was not paralyzed by the Force but by his own fear. He knew what he'd done. Rey gripped the lightsaber with both hands now and brought it up, through his body, starting at his side and tearing through almost to his throat. He made a gurgling noise as the blade sliced through him, and when she drew back, he slumped, dead, to the ground.

She turned back to the remaining three. The look of horror on all their faces was precisely the same as that which had been on the Zabrak's. They knew what was coming for them. Rey released them from her hold: she would not slaughter them like animals, chained down and helpless, even though that was exactly what they'd done to Alik.

She opened her hand and the vibro-axe flew into it. A weapon in each hand, Rey bared her teeth at the men. They began to scatter, but with a few steps she had caught up to the human who'd hit Alik in front of her. She spat a curse word at him, whatever came to her lips first, and then crossed the blades. Her downward strike was all power: how much of it was her own and how much the Force strengthening her, even she could not say. The blades bit into the man's flesh and she drew down, opening her arms and slicing him in two.

"You're a Jedi." Alik's voice broke into her consciousness. Wonder and awe permeated his words. A Jedi was a thing of myth, a sorceress. Implacable, unattached.

"I am no Jedi," she said, looking at him. His silver-blue eyes were fixed on her. "I'm something else." And she would show him her magic.

Two men remained, plus the Quor'sav that was beginning to rise from the ground. Rey dropped the axe with a heavy thump and extinguished her lightsaber. She lifted both hands with the hilt still in her grip, letting the power of the Force flow through her. The room itself began to shake, to vibrate with energy; the lights flickered off and then on and then off, plunging them into relative darkness; objects fell off shelves. At last, the very stone walls around them broke apart, clumps of sandstone blowing outward, the random junk and bars of spice flying away as before a hurricane. Sargon, the Ugnaught, and the Quor'sav lifted up as if caught by a deadly wind and tossed away like leaves. A ripple, like when a stone falls into water, emanated from where Rey stood, the desert sand rising and falling in a perfect circle that expanded out toward the bare horizon that surrounded them.

Rey and Alik were alone amidst the rubble.

**If you're enjoying my story, please leave a comment! Thank you so much for reading! I'm almost finished writing it and I really think you'll like it!**


	25. Chapter 25

Panting, Rey looked around herself. The desert sand was absolutely smooth, like it had been raked clean, the surface debris blown out away from where the building had stood. Only Alik stood above ground level, his clothes and face and hair a mess. She had killed five men, leveled a building and the ruins of several more, and, most importantly, rescued Alik. She wiped her forehead with the back of her forearm, and when it came away she saw blood along with the dirt.

A shadow flitted across the furthermost vision of her eye – a figure against the bright sunlight, tall and black, familiar yet strange. When she turned her head to follow it, it was gone.

"That was incredible," Alik said, capturing her attention. He still pressed his hand to his ribs as if they hurt, but his eyes were on her. A mixture of emotions was on his face, relief and fascination, as he approached her. "I've never seen anything like that."

"I don't suppose so," she replied, softly, placing the lightsaber back on her hip. He was very near to her, examining her as if to see if she were real. "You're not afraid of me now?"

"I mean, a little bit," he said honestly, grinning. His lip split anew as he did so; he looked like hell.

Rey could manage only a little smile in return. What she'd done was not what Luke and Leia had taught her – they would never have allowed her to give in to anger like that. The rage she'd felt scared her, and yet here Alik stood, beaten but alive.

"I can help you with that," she offered.

"With what?" he asked, wiping at the blood on his lip.

"That," she said, and she reached out to him and laid her hand against his cheek. The swelling around his eye went down, the broken skin knit back together, and he inhaled so deeply it was as if he hadn't drawn breath in an hour. He looked a little frightened now, as he realized what she'd done. Rey broke his gaze, suddenly embarrassed, and dropped her hand.

"Thank you," he managed after a moment, his voice very quiet and strained. She did not look up again.

The sound of a ship, far away, came to them both at the same moment, and they turned toward the noise. "Lump," she said, as she could it was him without being able to see the Falcon, and as it approached and landed, she felt new cause for the wrenching in her chest.

"Wow," Alik said to the Wookiee as he disembarked. Apparently that was all he could manage at the sight of the battered old freighter and he was uncharacteristically silent as Lump growled at him and strode right to Rey.

_That was not okay,_ he said.

"I know," she murmured. Tears were pricking her eyes and beginning to threaten to overflow. Lump examined her, the few bruises and the cut near her hairline that was dribbling just a little, and threw his arms around her, pulling her into him with a ferocity that surprised her. A sob escaped her and she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his fur.

~/~/~

Rey clung to Lump's arm as they sat together at the dejarik table on the Falcon. She'd apologized already for what she'd done, but the guilt clung to her even after a turn in the refresher.

"The Dark side is faster, easier," she told him, very softly. Her own words were like bile on her tongue. "Forcing you was just … easier."

Lump was silent for a long time. He'd forgiven her aloud twice now, but the distance between them still stood, and Rey could feel her heart breaking. _I don't know what your master would say, _he said at last. _But I know what my parents would say._

He was right. This was not how to honor Luke and Leia.

Alik came out of the refresher, the blood washed from his hair and the dirt from his skin. He looked almost himself, except that he was wearing not his usual resplendence but just the white inner shirt and trousers, which, without the jerkin and overcoat and cloak, were quite plain. He looked at Rey but dropped her eyes quickly and went away from them. He seemed deeply aware that he was intruding, yet had no way to escape.

"What do I do?" she whispered to Lump. "How can I earn back your friendship?"

_You never lost it! _Lump replied, more quickly and more loudly that perhaps he intended. _I love you and I would have come back for you even if you hadn't made me. I just wish you'd let me help you._

"I can't risk you," she said. "I owe Chewie more than that." But now they were both just saying out loud what didn't need to be spoken. A painful thought was building up in her: the friends she'd loved so much had left her on Exogol. They'd chastised her for not fighting enough in their war, but they'd let her disappear into that Sith temple without a word. They'd not come back for her. Ben had come for her, given his life for hers, and Lump had tried to follow her into that gangster's den. This was real love, like when Chewie had dragged her from her tent when all she really wanted was to die. "I love you too," she said, finally, and let Lump put his arm around her.

"Are we okay now?" she asked, through the knot in her throat.

_We're always okay. Just don't do that to me again._

"Never," she agreed. And then, "I know where the farm is."

"How can you know without Zed?" Alik asked. Rey had almost forgotten he was there.

"She told me," she said, picking her head up. "Just a little ways over the western ridge."

"Then we should finish what you came here for."

She stood up. Alik was right. Her actions against Lump had been unworthy, but she could right them. "Lump, will you take us?"

He nodded and went into the Falcon's cockpit. The engines fired up and Rey went to retrieve her masters' lightsabers. She could feel Alik watching her as she drew them out of her bag. The saber hilts were heavy in her hands, but familiar. Luke's saber had drawn her on in this adventure, had led her out from fear and from endless clinging to the past. Her heart ached to give it up. Leia's had been a precious treasure that even Luke had protected when he could not longer protect _her_ greatest treasure.

Rey carefully unscrewed the hilt of Leia's saber to reveal the kyber crystal within. She had nothing of Ben's, nothing at all, but this. She plucked the crystal from the cage that held it and looked at the crystal in the palm of her hand. Then she pressed it to her heart and put it into the pocket of her garments, as close to herself as she could make it. She was ready now.

"What will you do now?" she asked Alik, over her shoulder.

"Go home, I suppose," he replied.

"Back to Naboo?" she asked. She turned to look at him in surprise. He was standing, her shoulder against the wall, his head ducked to avoid the slope up to the ceiling where a loose wire looped down. His hands were shoved into his pockets and his eyes were on the floor. Going home seemed unsafe. "There are spice mines on Naboo."

He nodded. "Yes. And my mother is the regional governor there. I'll have her protection, and, you know, her name."

Rey took a step toward him, listening to him but also trying to feel his emotions. He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "I've had enough adventures for a while. Time for a break." Then he shifted, turning away as if afraid Lump would overhear. "Come with me." He looked at her, his gaze intense and fearful. "Come with me. You'll like Naboo. It's beautiful, and quiet."

She looked at him, trying with all her might to read his face. To decide what he was offering.

"You know I'm Force sensitive. You know what I can do." She gestured at the lightsabers in her hands, the third, on her hip, an unspoken presence.

"I don't care," he said, and then quickly, "I mean, it doesn't matter. I already thought you were amazing." His silver blue eyes were sharp, his brows drawn together in fierce concentration. He dropped his eyes and Rey reached out to him, searching him and his emotions. A kind of eagerness, a hope ...

Alik's meaning dawned on her slowly. She set the sabers on the table, very gently and very slowly, and looked back up at him.

"My family will love you," he offered. Rey's eyes narrowed and she realized that her breath was suddenly very shallow. It was a very good offer. Her heart racing, she very, very subtly nodded back to him.


	26. Chapter 26

The Falcon set down a few yards from the farm. Lump had spotted it, just as Zed had told Rey, and he selected their landing location so as not to disturb the sand around the old outbuildings. Rey emerged from the ship slowly, her hands trembling. This was it, the place she'd been searching for; she knew it as soon as her feet touched the ground. She could feel it. A tragedy had happened here, something she couldn't name. The place seemed to vibrate with sadness and loneliness and longing.

She moved, very quietly, never speaking, toward the main part. The living area, she realized, as she looked down into the dugout, now filling with sand. What might it have been to be a child growing up here? Was Luke loved? Had his guardians cared about him? Did he have to work hard to survive out here? She supposed so; she'd grown up in a desert too, and she knew that every sip of water was a gift. This old moisture farm must have been a source of pride for whoever the adults in Luke's life had been.

Rey found a sheet of metal and let herself slide down into the living space of the farm. She pictured Luke as a child, trying to play here; as a teenager, learning to be a man here. What would the people who raised him think of how he turned out? She hoped they'd be proud.

There was nothing left of the farm worth taking, not even a trinket. Scavengers – they had been here, many times over the decades. She would have done the same, of course. There was no blame.

Finally, Rey realized that there was nothing left to do but what she had come for. She gave herself a push and leapt out of the dugout in one bound. It was useless to pretend she didn't have her abilities: foolish because Lump and Alik both knew what she was capable of, and foolish because they were both inside the ship. She'd asked them to give her this time to herself, and they obliged.

She knelt on the warm sand and drew out the two Skywalker sabers, along with a cloth from the Falcon. Leia would like something of Han's. Rey wrapped the sabers together in the cloth and tied it shut with a bit of twine. It hurt to lay the bundle on the ground, knowing that she never intended to return here. Whatever belonging she would find, it lay ahead and not behind. Using the Force, she pressed the little bundle back into the sand, and it sank, deep into the surface where the scavengers would not find it. Deep where the winds would not expose it. Deep where the memories it contained could be protected, secured, and guarded in love forever.

In her mind's eye, she pictured Luke and Leia watching her. They'd be proud. She'd make them proud. She'd honor what they'd lived and died for. Ben was gone but she remained – she remained _because_ Ben was gone. They'd poured all their hopes into him and he into her, and now she had to live up to it for all of them.

A sound forced her head up. For an instant, she thought it was Lump coming to check on her, but she knew he would respect her wishes. No: it was an old woman, bent by time and wrinkled by the twin suns above, leading a pack animal Rey could not name.

"It's been so long," the old woman muttered. It was clear that Rey's intrusion into the woman's trudge home was not welcome. "Who are you?"

"Rey," she answered. But something else tugged at her, something she'd been wanting to say aloud for months now.

"Rey who?" the old woman snapped.

She hesitated. She could almost feel her masters behind her, urging her on. _Say it, _they seemed to whisper. "Rey Skywalker," she said at last. A weight seemed to lift from her; it felt right, and it felt good. She would have chosen that family, would have chosen Ben if she could. _Had _chosen Ben. Skywalker felt right.

The woman moved on without reply. It didn't matter who she told, if she told anyone, if she had anyone to tell, that there was someone at the Skywalker farm who called herself by that name. Rey would be gone long before anyone else came out to see what was up. She drew her own saber and ignited it, its golden blade bright in the dusk. _Enough adventures, _Alik had said; perhaps he was right. She extinguished it again and returned to the ship, pausing for just a moment to memorize the sight of the vanishing farm and the suns sinking above her.

~/~/~

Lump couldn't make sense of what she was saying. _You're going to Naboo,_ he repeated, as if her words were gibberish. They sat together on the steps into the Falcon, waiting doe Alik to return from an errand.

She squeezed his hands in hers. "I need to find my family."

_What family are you going to you find there? _**_We're_**_ your family_, Lump said. He shook his head and sighed. _Just come back with me to Kashyyyk._

Rey drew in a shaky breath. "Yes, you are." She chose her words very carefully. "But that's just it. I'm twenty-one years old: to your people, that's still literally a baby. Even if I live to be old, you'll still be young."

She looked down at their hands. They were each clinging to one another, squeezing so hard it almost hurt both of them. No one had ever been as kind to her as had Chewie and Malla; no one had shown her so completely what it was to have a partner. "I want what your parents have. And I can't have that on Kashyyyk."

He gave a long, sad sound and lifted a large hand to pet her head. They sat there in silence for several moments, thinking. They'd been through a lot these months, and Rey was grateful for a friend like him. A brother.

"And you need to go home and find that girl with the honey-blonde fur," Rey said, at last. If Wookiees could blush, Lump did then.


	27. Chapter 27

"Everyone, please meet my dear friend Rey Skywalker," Alik said, sweeping his hand toward her as if he hoped they'd find her as impressive as he evidently did. He introduced his parents first, and they each behaved as if they couldn't be gladder to make her acquaintance.

Alik's mother and father were much as she had imagined them. His mother, who introduced herself as Mara, wore her governor's uniform, evidently having just come from the office. It was a crisp white skirtsuit with gleaming gold buttons. Her hair was pinned up on top of her head, unadorned but a stunning color of dark gold, and her eyes were a pleasant brown flecked with amber. She was by far the least flamboyantly dressed; her uniform made Rey uneasy, though she fought to remind herself that Leia herself had been instrumental in the growth of the New Republic.

His father, Jafan, was as tall as his wife, with blond hair gone white and a tightly groomed patch of beard on his chin and sideburns that reached his jaw. He wore a long robe of shimmering black that hung from his shoulders to the floor. It was open in front, with elegantly embroidered bands running vertically beside the silver buttons. He had on a very dark grey shirt and matching trousers, but these were hidden by the top layer, aside from the puff of shirtsleeve at each wrist. A long silver chain overlaid it all, a wonderous piece of fine jewelry that made him look perfectly assembled.

"My brother, Drake, and his wife Puja," Alik said, introducing the attractive couple. She would have picked Drake out of a crowd as Alik's brother, the resemblance was so clear. Blond and blue-eyed, with the same air of self-assurance. He was smartly dressed in a burgundy jerkin over a shirt the color of cream. Burgundy velvet trousers were tucked into his very fine leather boots, the sort that were styled to look like what one would wear riding some beast of burden but were much too expensive to actually do so. He was clean-shaven and handsome, with an easy smile that made Rey feel at home despite herself. Drake gave a little bow to the guest, and to Alik he said, "You've got a little something on your chin there, baby brother," and he gave Alik's short whiskers a playful tug. Alik beamed back at him like any adoring younger brother.

Puja was stunning. Her hair was a beautiful, shiny copper red, as thick and heavy as cloth, and it fell in soft natural curls all around her face and down her back. It had been decorated with emerald hairpins and combs that matched her eyes. Her skin was the color of milk, the fairest human complexion Rey had ever seen. A lifetime of care and no need to labor in the sun had kept it as soft and white as a child's. Soft brown makeup highlighted her eyes and her lips were lightly painted a glossy russet. But what really struck Rey was her figure: Puja was all curves, her breasts and hips round and full, her waist narrow but perfectly balanced. She'd never gone to bed with her stomach aching with hunger and knowing she'd have to get up before dawn to work for enough food to stay alive. She'd never had to fight off a being twice her size, reduce him to a bloodied and bruised mess on the sand at her feet, in order to avoid being assaulted in a worse way. No: Puja's green velvet gown was cut to show off her chest, the neckline dipping lower than seemed wise to Rey. The skirt of her gown was split to reveal a second layer beneath it, in ivory satin, and to her shoulders was attached a cape to match. She looked as elegant as an image on the holonet, and she wore her gown as easily as Leia had worn hers, as if she'd never known any other way to dress. She'd always known beauty and kindness and warmth.

This is what Rey could have been, she realized. _Should _have been. A senator's granddaughter, surrounded by beauty and elegance, accustomed to comfort and deference, well fed and well cared for. Perhaps – and Rey tried not to think about it as much as she could – married to a senator's son, a prince who'd made her his princess.

It took Rey a moment to realize that Puja had extended her hand to her and wore a welcoming smile. Rey took her hand and shook it, unsure if there were more to the greeting ritual that she just didn't know. "It's so wonderful to meet you, Rey Skywalker," Puja said, her voice as liquid and melodious as Rey would have imagined. Her many bracelets jangled on her bare arms. Despite the utter foreignness of it all, Puja seemed kind and genuine. Rey felt small and drab compared to these elegant people. She had almost entirely forgotten where Alik had come from, no matter how quickly she'd appraised him when she'd first met him. She knew he was very kind, if haughty at times, and a good friend; she would try to assume the same of his family as well.

"Won't you come in?" Mara asked, and the party started toward the stairs leading upward into the house, Rey assumed.

Behind her, she heard Jafan ask Alik, "Where did you find that thing?"

"I _bough_t it, Dad," Alik replied, with a laugh in his voice, adding, "Anyway, it's hers now." She didn't hear what if any reply Jafan made to that. All of this seemed a bit overwhelming and she tried to focus on making her way up the stairs without tripping over the inches-thick carpeting on them.

The house itself was warm and clean, with high ceilings and beautiful, shiny walls and many rooms. Some areas had polished stone floors, while others, mostly the private rooms reserved for the family only, had that same squishy carpet. Droids of many types wandered around the house performing various tasks, and Rey looked with wonder around her. Naboo already seemed like the most civilized and elegant place in all the galaxy, and she'd only ever been in this one home.

Puja let herself lag back to walk with Rey. "Skywalker's not a common name," she observed. "Are you related to the general from the old wars?"

"No," Rey said quickly. Then she caught herself and said, "Not exactly."

"Hmm," the other woman said. "That's a shame. What an exciting legacy that would be." Her eyes glittered warmly, and Rey could feel that she was trying to be kind. "Where are you from?"

She thought for a moment, and decided to say, "I grew up in the Outer Rim."

"Ah, I've never had the pleasure. Never left the Mid, actually," Puja said. From her tone, Rey imagined that Puja felt a bit sorry about that. A taste for adventure seemed to be a common trait among Alik's family. Well, it usually is for lots of people, right up until they get a taste of it.

Just then, Alik caught up to them and unintentionally put an end to the conversation. Rey was grateful. "Puja, since Rey's never been to Naboo, I'd really love to show her Theed."

"How lovely," Puja said, smiling. "You're going to love it. Chandrila and Coruscant get all the renown, but there's nothing like Naboo at night."

Alik nodded. "Would you be willing to lend Rey a dress or something? There isn't really time to go shopping before dinner."

Puja's polite smile broke into a grin of genuine happiness. "What a lovely idea! I have just the thing."

~/~/~

A shining chrome protocol droid led Rey to her room and left her to wait for Puja. The room was airy, with the same high ceilings as the rest of the house. There was, not a sonic refresher, but a real marble bathtub right in the room, which the droid switched on before he left. As it filled, Rey pulled back the curtains which revealed a tiny balcony on the central garden of the home. The bed in the center of the room was wider than any she'd ever seen before, bit enough for at least two separate people, and it was spread with a soft coverlet and pillows that practically called Rey to curl up on them. She set her bag on one of the chairs at the small table, and patted it, just to reassure herself that both her books and her lightsaber were still inside.

It was good she wasn't tempted to actually examine the saber, because just then Puja arrived with a human female servant, a pretty girl a few years younger than Rey, dressed in a deceptively simple dress that went from her shoulders to her feet in one single, smooth piece. The girl carried a pile of fabric which Rey guessed was a few dresses for her to try on. She laid the fabric on the bed and waited for Puja to tell her what to do.

"Since you've never been here, I want you to have the full experience," Puja said, exuberantly. "Yanté will help you with your bath and your hair; she does mine and she does such a lovely job. I'll get your gown ready."

"Just one?" Rey asked, feeling silly again.

Puja nodded, cheerily. The whole pile of fabric was not multiple gowns for Rey to choose from, but a single ensemble. She met Yanté's eyes and the girl moved to help her undress. Rey was certainly not accustomed to that – neither to being undressed by a servant nor to being undressed with other people around, but Yanté was polite and her hands were very gentle. When she realized that Rey was uncomfortable, she disappeared around a corner and returned with a screen, which she set up around the tub to shield Rey's modesty. When Rey was fully immersed in the warm, scented water, Yanté came back to her with a bottle in one hand and a comb in the other, ready to work on Rey's hair.

Scrubbed clean and her hair washed and combed, Rey did indeed feel better. Yanté brought her a silky, white blouse to put on. It covered her to the tops of her thighs, and she felt more comfortable emerging from behind the screen to meet Puja. The dress was all laid out over the bed, with its several parts. First, Yanté helped her step into the skirt that matched the blouse; this was the under layer, meant to be felt by the wearer but not seen, even though it was as soft as a kiss and so beautifully assembled that it must have been made of some fabric Rey had never known. Then Yanté held out the second layer, an ivory robe which Rey initially tried to put on backwards. It turned out that it wrapped around her front and closed with a sash which Yanté tied tight enough to press against Rey's middle and lift her small breasts from below. The top layer was a cerulean blue gown that was all one piece, a long woven rectangle that reminded her vaguely of the Wookiee tapestries in its richness and detail. Puja helped lay it over her, settling the open neckline over her head and adjusting it so that the top of her cleavage was exposed alluringly. Rey didn't know how a gown made for Puja's womanly curves could possibly fit her, but Puja tied the laces around her waist and into elegant bows in the back, and the gown seemed to adjust itself to perfection.

Yanté styled Rey's hair into a high coiffure. She worked quickly and efficiently so that it took much less time than Rey would have thought possible given the extraordinarily complicated finished design. It was hung with ribbons and jewels that matched the ivory middle layer of Rey's outfit, contrasting with her dark brown hair. The final touch was the makeup. Rey had never in her life painted her face, and she didn't allow Yanté to use foundation but only to line her eyes and color her eyelids the same cerulean as her gown, and a peach-colored gloss for her lips. They hung sparkling jewelry around her neck and wrists. Glittering slippers went on her feet; they were stiff and uncomfortable compared with Lump's well-broken boots, but so very pretty.

When Puja and her maid were finished, Rey looked at herself in the wall mirror, and there she saw at last the image of a daughter of Naboo: highly crafted, carefully designed, and flawless. Rey at once hated and loved it, and hated that she loved it.

Puja's smile was infectious, however, and her glee at Rey's transformation forced Rey to smile too. Nothing felt quite as good as when she arrived in the house's foyer to meet Alik and he seemed unable to take his eyes off her. His esteem for her had never been a secret, but tonight his gaze made her blush. He'd cleaned up well, too, with his beard trimmed into a flamboyant goatee and his hair combed back. He wore a violet suit in a very different style from the clothes he'd been stuck in since she'd meet him, but which flattered him. In fact, he looked downright handsome, his face all the more pleasing because its comforting familiarity.

"There now," Puja said, proud of her creation and its match. "Now you look like you're ready to see Theed."


	28. Chapter 28

Theed, it turned out, was the capital city of Naboo, or at least of its human citizens. Alik led her out into the street and Rey realized that it was nearly dusk already, and the city lights were beginning to turn on. The streetlamps glowed around them, and she could see the powerful buildings of the city, domed in verdigris. There were statues everywhere on the ground, and the air was still full of spaceships of all sizes. While the majority of the beings they passed were human, a good-sized minority were a tall, brownish-green species with long floppy ears. It was easy to see that they were primarily an aquatic species; Alik saw her glancing and told her these were the Gungans who shared their planet.

They walked through the crowds, slowly, so Rey could take it all in. "I've never been anywhere like this," she muttered. Everything was so beautiful: every building was so carefully built, every space treated like its own artwork, every person a portrait.

Despite the weight of the gown, Rey felt vaguely naked without a weapon. She carried nothing of her own, having left even her money back in Alik's family's home, and she had no way to protect the beautiful things Puja had so willingly shared with her. But Alik was dressed in equal finery, and she knew very well that he didn't carry a weapon, even when he wasn't in his own town, and he seemed utterly unconcerned. She remembered the little Rhodian child who'd tried to pick her pocket; she'd stopped the child using the Force, but Alik possessed no such power.

"All these people around," Rey observed. "Don't you ever worry about your safety?"

"Safety?" he echoed. "No. Theed is known for its excellent public safety." He nodded toward a uniformed woman standing on a street corner. "A few decades ago there was an attack on the Queen and the people. We've worked hard to find a balance between security and freedom, and, honestly, you'll have a hard time finding a city that's done a better job of it." He was proud of his city, of his people's accomplishments. Did he know how many had died to keep him so blissfully pleased with his homeworld?

They walked for a long time before Rey realized she was hungry. "We haven't eaten dinner," Alik observed, as if he'd heard her thoughts. "Would you rather sit down and be served or – no, this is definitely better." He was being deliberately mysterious. He motioned for her to follow and they cut through a sidestreet where diners sat in twos and fours at tables under the stars. They turned a corner to find the river, its crystalline waters flowing gently under the moonlight, and a little marketplace set up on its bank. Tiny tents had been erected all along the river, with vendors selling all kinds of food, the smells wafting together like a beautiful symphony.

Alik led her from tent to tent, buying one of this and three of that, and they shared skewered meats and plump ripe fruits and sticky breads that left icing on their chins. He gave her a clear glass vessel full of dark liquid, a wine from the other side of the galaxy; it was strong, but nothing like the ales a brews the Wookiees liked: sweet and warm in her mouth. They stood and listened to street musicians playing instruments she'd never seen before. One busker had a dancer with him who waved a silk scarf around herself as she moved in sync with the music, and Rey felt herself swaying very slightly along with her as she watched. "The Thana," Alik whispered into her ear. "Traditional dance from the countryside."

They wandered up river a few paces from the food tents, where the music wasn't as loud and there weren't quite so many people. Rey stood back and tried to take it all in. Naboo was an incredible sensory delight. Every single inch of the place was packed tight with beauty and a conscious effort to please as greatly as possible. It hummed with life; a different kind of life than Kashyyyk did, to be sure, but _life. _Vibrancy. It was a place of impossible beauty.

Suddenly, an explosion burst out of the night sky behind them. Rey jumped and turned sharply toward the sound. A second explosion roared as she tried to get her bearings. Blue and red lights streaked across the sky, shimmering slightly as the sparks fell into the river. Someone back by the food tents gave an awed "wow" and a child off to her left clapped.

Alik was facing her, his hand on her shoulder. "It's just colors and lights," he was saying. "Look. It's for show." She turned her head up to the sky again, and saw a third streak rising up from somewhere behind some trees; it exploded and released a shower of violet sparkles that danced across the sky like the woman dancing the Thana.

"You set off bombs for fun?" she asked him, incredulous.

"They're not bombs," Alik protested. "I mean, they're not _really _bombs. It's just a show. Lights and colors," he said again. Rey didn't seem comforted. "It can't hurt you. It's all very tightly controlled. There's a whole pyrotechnic team that maintains the fireworks." He was quiet then and watched Rey's eyes follow another streak of light up from the river and into the dark night sky. It exploded and rained down the glittering lights; the sparks dissipated long before they approached the ground, and the ashes fell harmlessly into the water. Her brows furrowed briefly at the display, but more children were gathering around them, their voices rising and falling as each new firework rose, burst, and floated downward. It took several minutes, but her face relaxed and she watched the show, even smiling when a particularly creative one burst into two concentric circles above them like magic. Alik leaned toward her, imperceptibly at first, then enough that he had to adjust his weight on his feet. He laced his fingers with hers, and she closed her hand around his.

~/~/~

"May I come in?" he asked, very gently. His silver-blue eyes sparkled in the soft, warm torchlight of the hallway, studying her face with intensity. Wordlessly, Rey turned the doorhandle under her palm and it opened into the darkened guestroom. She stepped back into the room, slowly, so Alik could follow her.

And he did. He shut the door, carefully and silently; for an instant the room was absolutely dark until he clicked on the lights with the switch by the door. The wall sconce behind him lit up his hair so that it put a golden halo all around his head; Rey couldn't help but feel the edges of her lips curl with pleasure at the sight of him and she turned away.

Puja's dress was too heavy and too long; it might be appropriate for a night out in Theed, but here in the small, intimate guestroom of his parents' house it only reminded her that she was a desert mouse suddenly in a palace. She reached behind herself to undo the lacings around her waist; they were too intricately tied and her fingers couldn't find the ends.

"Let me," Alik offered, and he pulled the lace that loosened the gown around her so she could step out. The rich blue brocade fell stiffly off of her and to the floor. The next layer wrapped in front; she untied the sash and shrugged that down her shoulders. After a moment, she was dressed in the simple blouse and skirt, more like herself except for the heavy jewelry around her neck and wrists. She pulled the bangles off her wrists, sliding them over her hands, and set them on the dressing table. Alik undid the clasp of her necklace, silently, his fingers warm where they brushed her skin, and laid it beside the bracelets.

Rey stepped out of the glittering golden slippers and stood in her stocking feet on the soft carpet, feeling herself sink slightly into its plush softness. She was aware, so aware, of Alik standing behind her, watching her undress, and she realized that she was trembling.

She drew in a steeling breath and turned to look at him again. His open waistcoat revealed the satin of his shirt, loose and gentle. He'd laid his jacket over a chair by the door with his tall leather boots. His hair was rumpled and out of place; he'd managed to run his hands through the careful coiffure he'd left the house with hours ago.

Rey stepped forward, toward him, and lifted her hands to his collar. She slid the waistcoat over his shoulders and he let it fall to the floor with the rest of her garments. It felt at last to her like they were two equals again, without the elegant trappings between them. Alik wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her into him; it surprised her that he was trembling too.

For a second, he only looked at her, as if he couldn't believe she was letting him hold her. Then she closed her eyes and waited, and he kissed her.

Alik's kiss was soft and afraid. Nervous. Almost as if he weren't sure she wanted him – but she did. His beard was softer than she'd imagined, his hands warmer. He took her by the hand and brought her to the bed and pulled her into his lap, her arms and legs around him while he buried his face in her throat. A soft sound escaped her – not of pain, though it sounded like it. Alik supported her head with one hand and kissed her exposed collarbone, moving to the soft flesh just below.

Then he pulled up her blouse, and she shrugged it off over her head and pulled her arms out the sleeves so that it landed inside-out on the floor. His hands on her skin made her shiver. "You're so beautiful," he whispered. She was familiar enough with the basic mechanics of sex, but she hadn't realized he would run his tongue over her breast, or that she'd want him to.

They moved so that Rey lay on the soft pillow of the bed. The bed itself gave underneath her; it was so unlike the hard benches or cots she'd known her whole life, like being enveloped, pulled down into its warmth and comfort and peace. Alik was above her, lying between her thighs. He was hard under his clothes; she could feel him through her skirt. "I'll be good to you," he promised, his voice a low murmur in her hair. His hand, hot on her skin, ran up under her skirt and between her legs. A perfect shudder of pleasure ran through her, surprise and fear and lovely happiness all at once. A life, here on Naboo; a life with him, free of fear and endless chasing. Full of quiet and of happy adventures and of Alik close beside her. "I'll be so good to you," Alik said again.

_No._ The thought came to her entirely of its own accord. Because all of a sudden, she knew it wasn't Alik she wanted in her bed. It wasn't his cologne she wanted to make her feel lightheaded, or his hands on her skin. She squirmed out from under him to stand beside the it, her breath caught in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she said. She couldn't think of what else to say.

Alik was up on one elbow, looking at her, astonished. "It's okay – we're both nervous. If I did something wrong –"

"You did everything right," Rey said quickly. It was everything else that was wrong. For an awful moment they just looked at each other. She felt sick. "I – There's just … someone else."

The words sounded stupid _– insane_, really – even as she said them. In love with a dead man. Lunacy. She shook her head at her own words, incredulous that they could even be hers.

Alik didn't speak, but watched her as she pulled her own tawny dress over her head and slid the satiny skirt out from under it, laying it over the chair with as much reverence as she could manage, and closed the sash around herself. She found her one little bag, the one that held her few clothes and the gold lightsaber and Luke's books, and put it over her shoulder. She looked back at him; he hadn't moved.

"I wanted to," she said, at last. "I really did." And then she went out the door, shut it silently behind her, and ran the whole way to the docking bay.


	29. Part 3: Chapter 29

When she touched the control panel to open the hangar bay door, it opened immediately. She knew perfectly well that it did not have to be that way. If Alik wanted to stop her, he could have. He was letting her go. Bitter tears welled in her eyes. She had broken his heart and he was letting her go.

It wasn't that she didn't want Alik; she did, actually. Very much. At least, her body did. He was handsome and kind and, she realized now, he adored her. She knew perfectly well that sleeping with him would have been bliss. But Alik would never make her complete. What she had shared with Ben, even for those moments, was irreplaceable. To pretend otherwise, to make Alik believe that she loved him in return, would have been to lie. And it would've only been more and more unspeakably cruel as time went on.

She could have had a life on Naboo, perhaps something like the life she might've had. But, as much as she liked Alik, she knew that for her there was only one, and she thought but she might know how to get him back. And if it didn't work – well, then she prayed that she would enter the Force and see him again there.

The past may live in her and all the Jedi, but she could not live in the past. She could not be a Jedi she could not hide away on an island and drop herself off a cliff when the grief became too much to bear. She'd already had too many years alone; if Ben was not to be her future and finding him will be her cliff.

She shook her head to clear it of all those morose thoughts and climbed inside the Hope. She had nothing, nothing at all but what she'd come to Naboo with, and fewer friends. She shut the entry door and sat down in the cockpit. The Hope powered on without a problem and a short message flashed across its dashboard, telling her that Lump had arrived safely on Kashyyyk. Her heart skipped: she knew what she had to do now, and that she might never see him again.

Rey felt ill. For a moment she wondered if she should go back to the refresher to vomit, but she forced herself to press down the urge. She had to get off Naboo before there was any reason not to and she couldn't face Alik again. Not now.

The hangar doors opened automatically as the Hope rose into the air and hovered slightly for an instant; at last, she pushed the controls forward and the ship slipped into the open sky. Rey ignored the tears that were dripping down her cheeks and commanded her voice to be still when Naboo air control asked for her identification as she left. Would her hands ever stop shaking? She wasn't sure.

There was no one to talk to, so she talked out loud to herself. "A twisting ribbon that connects certain points in galaxy and allows travel among the points, but also through time." She pushed the Hope out of Naboo airspace and then out of the system entirely, into the blank space beyond, and gazed at the navicomputer. She needed to enter coordinates, to go _somewhere_, because she couldn't hang here like spacejunk for long. In the Mid Rim, someone would notice her and question her, and she'd have no place to go. She pushed the manual controls forward, urging the little starfighter into range of the hyperlane.

"A twisting ribbon," she repeated. She pictured the image in the Rammahgon where that ribbon wound and wound through the galaxy; what were those points it connected?

Ahch-To, surely. She thought of the cave where she'd begged to see her parents. The center of the planet had called to her and she had gone, willingly, to it. Straight to the Dark, because it was easier and faster than the alternative.

Exogol, of course. Darkest darkness there, the most awful memory she could conjure up. The face of a demon, reanimated and rotting. The only scrap of good on that planet fading into nothing. Her stomach lurched again.

Ossus. Luke had found the Rammahgon itself there, somewhere in a temple. If a temple, then a Jedi temple. And if a Jedi temple, then a chance it was connected by that ribbon. Ossus.

Her fingers flew over the navicomputer controls as she selected her destination. Ossus was outside the Known galaxy, of course, and the computer beeped dissonantly at her, rejecting her request. She tried again, selecting instead a tiny system on the further edge of the Outer Rim, Gannaria. The computer accepted her request, processed for a moment, and then the entire ship shuddered as she entered hyperspace and sped away from Naboo.

~/~/~

Gannaria appeared in front of her almost too quickly. She'd let herself slip into thought, but that was painful, so she'd instead found herself chanting the old mantra, the one from Leia, the one that pleaded for the Jedi of old to be with her. She hadn't heard their voices again – she wondered if she ever would – but her heart had calmed and her breath had returned and the tears had stopped, so that would have to be good enough.

It was virtually uninhabited, this small, dim planet before her. One side of the planet held a spice mine and the sentient population, while the other was a woodsy expanse. She chose that side, and aimed the little starfighter toward it.

A crackle on the comm system surprised her: "Pegasus Starfighter, identify yourself." She honestly had not anticipated any kind of air control here. What could she do?

"This is the Hope," she replied, willing herself to stay calm. "Just looking for a place to rest." That was true enough, she supposed.

"Military vehicles are not permitted on Gannaria," replied the voice. It was male, but not human. Twi'lek, perhaps: the Hutts likely controlled the mine, and they loved their enslaved Twi'leks. "Move on."

That was not acceptable. The spark of anger rose up in her again. She finally had a plan, and she'd be damned if she'd let a spice worker deter her now. "This is not a military vehicle," she managed, between clenched teeth. Obviously it was a starfighter, but she was not military. She hadn't even received a rank in the Resistance; she'd refused their offers, thinking about the fallen Jedi Order, which had given up its mandate as peacekeepers to fight in a war. Her role in the war was over now; she'd defeated Palpatine and all the Sith, and she'd refused to claim the failed title of Jedi. She chose instead the ancient way, the path between.

"You will let me pass," she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Silence met her on the other end. "You will let me pass," she said again, and she drew a deep breath, forcing herself to calm.

"You may pass," said the voice, and the crackle of the comm system told her he'd hung up. She let go of the breath, trembling a little, and steered the Hope down to the wooded surface below.


	30. Chapter 30

She filled the water tank on the Hope from a stream on Gannaria; she'd have to trust the filtration system and good luck that nothing too awful made it to human consumption. Then she found a flat rock by the stream and tried to collect her thoughts. She'd need a plan, and at present her entire plan consisted of, as Luke would say, landing on Ossus with a laser sword and hoping for the best. She lay back on the rock, warm from the sun. It was a crumbly sort of stone, the edges giving under her; streaks of dark grey shot through its soft white surface, the grey remaining while the white crumbled. She picked up a pebble between her fingers, held it over her face, and pressed it into powder before her eyes. She'd hurt enough people, lost enough people, that if today was her last day alive, it would be all right. Whatever contribution she had to offer the galaxy, she'd made it. Retrieving Ben from the Netherworld of Unbeing, whatever that was, could be her death. That was all right with her. She was immensely tired.

Rey opened her eyes suddenly, jerking her head up. She'd fallen asleep, on the warm stone with the sunlight blanketing her with warmth and peace. She was an unspeakable fool, wasting time like this – or, if the twisting ribbon were real, there was no such thing as time at all. Her head hurt vaguely from grief and thought and sleeping awkwardly.

She sat up the rest of the way and crossed her legs beneath her, just as her masters had taught her. She couldn't be a Jedi, couldn't live a life without attachment or love, and if she could not have her love, then she was growing confident that there was no reason to live. Or, at least, that there was no reason to fight to live. Her treatment of Alik had been unworthy, cruel even, but not as cruel as staying with him when she didn't love him, she reminded herself again. Everything she could have been, should have been, and never would be. She shut her eyes and begged the Force to watch over him.

The sunlight slid over her shoulders, almost an answer. "Be with me," she whispered. If she could not call on the masters, she could call on the Force itself, the Way of Life, for guidance. Only one face returned to her, Ben Solo fading into utter nothing under her very hands. It was a memory – of that she was sure – and not a vision, but she clung to it. She had to try.

Rey stretched out her left hand, eyes still closed, and the little red book popped into it like a servant answering a summons. She'd called it all the way from the Hope. She held it flat in her left palm and held her right hand over it: it flipped open, pages spinning as if caught on a breeze, and then it was still. She didn't need to see the page to know it was the right one, the one containing the image she needed. It was labeled the Thorpe Theorem, and she'd stared at it for hours on Ajan Kloss. Alik had given her the clue she needed. "Thank you," she whispered to him, though he would never hear it.

In her mind's eye, she saw the image, like phases of a moon. It was, nominally, a hyperspace plotting riddle, but there was more. It wasn't just a key to unlocking hyperspace – any engineer or astromech could figure that out – but a key to the Beyond. The slip of parchment tucked between the pages, with notes scrawled in the margins in that now-familiar hand, assured her of it. She could see it, all of it, opening before her: the lock clanking into place, the door sliding open, the brightness of the light that waited beyond.

She opened her eyes again and the book fell into her lap. She knew. She knew how to get inside, and just as confidently she knew that she didn't know anything more. She'd just have to find out when she got there: the Force wasn't going to show her now.

Her gaze landed on a creature that soared down from a tall tree through the dusk and to a bush off to her left. It landed on a branch and the branch hardly swayed, so light was the little winged creature, and it nibbled lightly on what she could now see was a deep purple fruit. Hunger swelled up in her and it occurred to her that not only was she no longer sure how long it had been since she left Naboo, she was quite sure that she hadn't eaten since she'd been in the marketplace on that planet. So much had happened since then that she could hardly believe it, but she'd gone too long without eating before. She wasn't unaccustomed to ignoring the hunger pangs.

She unfolded her legs and stood up slowly from the rock, her limbs stiff and sore. She moved toward the bush and the little flying creature startled and fled, but she tried not to feel bad. Instead she picked the purple fruit and, with a tiny little prayer that it wasn't poison, popped it into her mouth.

It was sweet and juicy, with a flavor couldn't place. She imagined some culture making dark wine from this fruit. Her fingers were stained just from touching it, but she swallowed and then stood for several moments, not dying. It seemed as safe as she could hope, so she knelt down and began to eat straight from the branch.

Her stomach was full and she still wasn't dead. It was nearly dark now – just how long was a day on Gannaria? – and she had food and water and as much rest as she was likely to get. She had a plan. There was no reason to wait any longer. On the Hope she found an empty drawer, which she filled with fruit for the journey. Should she take enough to return from Ossus? Would she return? She couldn't say, so she filled a second small box with berries and closed the entry door. It would have to be enough. She would have to be enough.


	31. Chapter 31

The Hope touched down sort of awkwardly. Rey was nervous and she couldn't really hide that. She was a good enough pilot – quite good, really – but everything seemed heightened, strange, like operating in a dream. Gannaria's air control hadn't cared about her leaving, and she was grateful not to have to force her will on anyone else just to get off that world with her cargo full of berries and river water.

Now she was here, her hands trembling on the flight controls, the Jedi temple just concealed behind a tangle of vines. She'd seen the huge complex from above and had known what it was without a doubt. The planet was dominated by hulking pyramids, with cracking plazas around them and ancillary buildings clustering about, but everything was covered over by the jungle, slowly reclaiming the abandoned spaces. This pyramid, the temple complex, stood on the top of a hill. She had no choice but to settle the Hope downhill from the temple; while it was small enough, it was long in the wings and needed a flat surface. A plaza, once carefully tended and now seeming to be snapped in half with green plants snaking upward through the crack, served the need. She opened the door and it lowered to the plaza surface, landing with a metallic clunk that seemed overloud in the virtual silence of the abandoned planet.

She picked up her bag, the one that contained the Jedi texts, and checked once again that her lightsaber was at her hip. No animals, sentient or otherwise, had appeared; likely no ships had been here in the decades since Luke's visit, and surely the planet's fauna was terrified by her sudden arrival. She closed the door behind her, the boarding door raising back up into the ship, and she was entirely alone. Cut off.

It was not humid here, not like Ajan Kloss, but comfortable like Kashyyyk. She knew she should leave the texts on the ship, but their weight on her shoulder was a comfort, like carrying the wisdom of the ancient sages. She'd made sure that she ate something before this perhaps-final adventure yet her stomach turned over as if starved for days, and the meditations hadn't helped to calm her. Only action, she knew, could cure what was ailing her. She drew in a deep breath and began her walk uphill to the temple.

It was a masterwork. Heavy stones had been fit together so tightly that a sheet of parchment could not slip between them; each one was carefully carved so that the stone bowed out toward the middle and curved back to where it touched the next. The stones were dark and rough and perhaps a bit damp; dark vines crept up the walls as high as her head and beyond, spreading their broad leaves to catch the sunlight. They sprouted a cone-shaped fruit, deep violet and nearly glowing; tiny white flowers encircled the fruit like a crown, and, upon closer inspection, she could see that their centers were a deep blood red. Rey cocked an eyebrow at the sight, hoping that this would not be some sort of sign.

She had to search for the door, therefore, hidden beneath the vegetation. She found it only by running her hand over the wall, slipping her fingers through the vines and leaves, feeling for a surface that differed from the heavy stones. At last, she found a smooth spot; when she pressed her hand in deeper, her whole palm could lie against polished rock. This was it, the door, though she could not yet see it. She drew her hand back and examined it. No damage, though what had she expected? She could tug down the vines, maybe, and reveal the entirety of the door, but that seemed like a fool's errand. The vines were thick and well adhered to the stones. Instead, she drew her lightsaber, ignited it, and carefully, deftly, sliced through the vines. They hissed as the heat of the plasma burned through them, but the act was as precise as scalpel and they fell away neatly, leaving as little damage as possible to the plants.

Now she stepped back to see it. The lintel of the door was carved with glyphs of some sort, each in a box and representing some sort of animal, mythical or otherwise. The lintel extended past the supports, which were smooth and carved not like animals but like the vines that were working so hard to retake the temple. The door itself was taller than she and very grand. Clearly everything here was meant to impress.

Three figures were carved shallowly into the stone of the door. At least, they looked like figures: like the animals on the lintel, they were highly stylized. But they were different, elongated rather than squared off. They were so lightly drawn that they seemed like etchings into metal, with no tool marks or even scratches from the vicissitudes of the local flora. If she looked at them just so, they seemed to be people, but blink or turn her head, and she lost the image and could see only the lines.

Rey was so entranced by the seemingly shifting image that it took her several minutes to realize that the door had no handle. How could she enter through a door with no handle? She leaned toward it, overcoming her inexplicable resistance to touching it, and ran her hands over the surface, the edges, the top and bottom, searching for some way to open it. She dug her fingernails into the stone and cursed in a way that would make Lump proud, but she could get no purchase.

"No," she whispered to the stone. She had not come this far to not even get a chance. She pushed instead of pulled, but the door did not yield. She pounded a fist into the stone, but not even an echo returned to her. Anger, the anger she'd come to know these months, the mute fury at the utter unfairness – the absolute injustice – of her life rose up again. It started in her stomach, a cold feeling, and crept up into her chest. She groaned and ground her forehead into the unbearably smooth rock, and the rage flooded down her arms and out her fingers. Sparks shot out from her and scrabbled over the door, dissipating harmlessly and ineffectually into nothing.

Rey let herself sink to the ground on her knees. She'd been hoping, begging, for the chance to try again, to fix what had gone wrong on Exogol. To repay what she could not deserve to have received. Most of all, to restore to him the opportunity he'd never really had the chance to grasp. Hot tears of frustration, of desperation, overflowed and ran down her cheeks, dripping onto her pathetic, dirty dress.

"_Please_."

Only silence replied. The stone temple, unmoved by her prayer, stood as implacable as the moment she'd landed.

But then.

A clink of stone on stone resonated from somewhere within. Her ear, pressed against the door, could just hear it. Then a scraping sound followed, deep and low, stone sliding on stone. The door, unfathomably heavy, moved under her fingers. It slid inward, almost imperceptibly, and then to the left, sliding, grinding, and disappearing into the wall itself. In just a minute, the entire slab of the door had slid open and away, leaving the entryway to the dark temple yawning and passable.

She gaped up from the ground at the huge open doorway, not able to believe what her eyes were telling her. With a sharp jerk, though, realizing that the door could close again just as quickly and with just as little warning, she climbed to her feet. Her blade was holstered at her hip, but she was quite sure that there was no use for it inside. The bag over her shoulder could only slow her down from what she knew she'd have to do in haste, so she set it behind a low, overgrown tree. She could not say why the temple had decided to let her in, but she would never be more ready than she was, so she entered.

There was no atrium or foyer to the temple. It simply _began,_ with the ceiling sloping upward at an absurd angle. This was the pyramid, unapologetic and vast. The floor sloped downward, her feet told her; she drew her lightsaber after all and used it as a lamp. There was little to see but darkness at the edge of the light it cast. She swallowed hard, feeling her heart in her chest, feeling her blood in her veins, and began to follow where the temple led.

Down, slowly and gently as if on an intentional grade, the floor sloped. She went slowly, unsure of her footing, even as she felt something urging her onward. Was it the Force? The temple itself? There was no way to know and, she somehow knew, no time to consider it. She went down the slowly sloping path as the walls around her slowly, slowly closed, until what had been a space as wide as the temple was only wide enough for one or two to pass. An impossible darkness surrounded her, growing as the diffuse light from the doorway faded and there was only the light from her blade - not that there was anything to see. The darkness was, however, not malicious. It seemed curiously familiar, almost comforting. If she could have assigned a personality to the absence of light, she would have said it was welcoming. It led her on until the floor stopped sloping and became flat.

Then the ground turned cool. She lowered the lightsaber to shine on it, and she realized that it was slick and glossy – it was no longer floor but water. She was standing on water, water as firm as ground but cool and perfectly, absolutely smooth. Where her feet touched it, it rippled slightly, but the ripples were damped and did not spread. She lifted her eyes and she could see that ahead of her the corridor widened again and a soft light glowed from far ahead. She extinguished the saber and took a step forward. She did not sink. Another, and still she stayed above the water. Her eyes on the light glowing up ahead, she began to run. She didn't know what was waiting for her in that light, but the anticipation drew her, forced her toward it.

A chamber of stone was waiting. She could not see the source of the light, but the chamber glowed. It was at least as large as the pyramid above, the ceiling invisibly high overhead. Rey passed a spot on the rough stone wall, a spot that was being-sized and as shiny and dark as the water beneath her feet. She peered in as she passed; nothing, not even her own face, was reflected back. The dark called her on, and she followed, past another spot of gloss. Only blackness shone there as well. But the third spot was not blank like the others: she paused, ignoring the tickle of the darkness that tried to urge her on. It was like looking into the mirror in her room on Naboo, but dark like obsidian. A figure, a human, was crumpled on the floor over another being. They were both dressed in black, but the one lying on the ground was as bald as an egg and the one crouching, his body heaving with effort, was pleading with him. Sparks shimmered over their heads. She could hear nothing of the scene, but she could feel the desperate longing and pain as she watched. But this was not her story and, after a moment, she had to pull her eyes away. When she glanced back up, they were gone.

The darkness called her and she went on. She looked back over her shoulder and all she saw was darkness again, like night closing her up inside the pyramid. She moved toward the light, the shadows pressing her forward past other glassy patches on the walls where other people's stories played out and vanished as soon as she passed.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked the nothingness. "I'm not here for any of this."

And then she stopped, and the glassy spot on the wall in front of her seemed to demand her attention. She looked into it, and, she realized, she saw what she had come for.


	32. Chapter 32

Through the glass, she could see it all happening all over again. But this time, she wasn't dead. Or – there were two Reys, and she was watching herself, dead in his arms.

Ben lifted her from the floor and looked left and right, as if he thought help might come. He knew, though, that there was no one and nothing to help her. He was alone. The awful knowledge that he was alone again, as he'd been all his life, crept into the living Rey's body, an ache she knew so well. She'd known it as long as she could remember, like death itself crawling through her, spreading its spectral fingers wide within her chest. Only a few brief moments had she ever known that feeling to subside: with her friends in the Resistance, on Kashyyyk in dear Chewbacca's living room, and there with him.

The feeling was like an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, with no end and no beginning. The feeling dwelled within her like a part of her, and it dwelled in him, and they both felt it because they were in fact one; and it pressed down on the Ben behind the glass, closing off his vision like a black mist, and she knew it because she felt it too because _they were one_.

She felt his resolve, then, when he knew what he had to do. The living Rey knew that he _would _do it, because here she stood, but she couldn't help but to cry out "no" when he nodded to himself. Ben held the dead Rey close, knowing that this was the only moment he would ever have with her. The living Rey hadn't known any of this, for she'd been dead, but that tenderest of moments broke her heart. And then he laid his hand on her, as she had done for him on the moon of Endor, and gave the last of his lifeforce to make her live again.

The dead Rey drew a breath and sat up. She spoke his name in wonder, and then she kissed him. The living Rey felt it too, felt Ben against her as he wrapped his arms around her. The specter fell away completely; there was only peace and oneness and the sweetest happiness she had ever known – and then, because there could only be death for either of them, she watched him collapse, right there, in her doppelganger's arms.

Rey realized she was on her knees, like the Rey behind the glass. That Rey hadn't been able to cry, but _she_ could, and she did. And then, she too knew what she had to do. Rey climbed to her feet, her hands trembling with the pain and with anger for the Emperor who had done this to her and to him. Han, Luke, Leia, countless Resistance fighters and, yes, countless of the Emperor's own, had all died for the Emperor's vainglory, and he was not going to have Ben too. Rey stretched out her hands, both of them, and set her feet as if to parry a blow from a sword; the effort made all her muscles vibrate and twitch all at once, as she reached through the glass before her with the Force and locked all her concentration onto Ben Solo.

She pulled him, and he came out, sprawled on the floor before her. Her heart seemed to stop, because for a moment he didn't move; and then his eyes sprang open as it occurred to him that he wasn't dead after all.

"Ben," she whispered, and his face turned sharply to look at her. He scrambled, awkwardly like someone who'd just been woken to an alarm, to his knees. He was gaping at her, uncomprehending.

Rey crouched down so that her face was level with his. He looked at her, searchingly, as if trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Three months she'd spent healing, building up her strength, trying to find herself again. She was strong and well, and somehow, she had found him. She touched the back of his hand with her fingertips, very lightly, because he was hurt, and she took a deep breath. She summoned the power she knew lay inside her, the life that he'd given her and that she'd built upon and grown like a blossom out of desert sand, and transferred that energy back to him. The burst skin under his eye, the blood from his split lip, all dried and closed; the bruises faded; his breath and heartrate slowed. The pain subsided.

Finally, he raised his hands and took her face in them. "How -" he started, then, "But I'm -", and at last, "What are you wearing?"

And she laughed, because it was ridiculous. It was all ridiculous. Ben covered her mouth with a kiss, hot and fierce and terrified. She was trembling too, as she knelt down and leaned into him; her arms wrapped around his neck and her body pressed against his. Her heart felt like it was bouncing wildly in her chest, pounding between her spine and her breastbone. She tasted salt tears, both of theirs.

Ben, still exhausted, collapsed down slightly from his knees to the floor, taking Rey with him. She clung to him, weeping even as she kissed him, a pile of tangled limbs and torn clothes and dirty hair. Of their own accord, her arms slid around his waist, under his shirt, and across his broad back, and then she was tugging at his clothes, suddenly desperate for the feel of his skin. She pressed into him more, her weight pushing him back; she caught them both with a hand before they hit the floor of the chamber, and he relaxed only slightly, resting his head while she lay on his chest, her mouth never leaving his.

In one motion, he rolled them both so he lay on top of her, her thighs around his hips. He was breathing hard, kissing her neck through her hair where it had fallen out of its braids, down to her collarbone. Rey moaned very softly at the feeling; he supported himself on one elbow, his other hand pushing up the skirt of her dress which had fallen to the floor around them, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her thigh. She scrabbled with his shirt again, as if to pull it up over his head. She meant to have him, and he her.

And then, suddenly shy, Ben pulled away from her and looked around them. If she didn't quite know where they were, she realized that somehow he did. "We can't," he whispered, his voice hoarse and deep. "Not here."

She was lightheaded, dizzy with desire. _A promise, then_.

She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath; she could feel his eyes watching her, memorizing her. "I love you," she murmured. His breathing stopped, caught short, and he sat up.

Rey opened her eyes and looked at him again, unsure and frightened by his silence. It had been wrong to say, she realized; she'd ruined the moment, ruined everything somehow –

"I would die for you," he said, in his own voice, firm and absolute. There was high color in his pale cheeks; he was incandescent with emotion, and Rey realized that it was not only with her own eyes she was seeing him, but through the Force. Happiness rolled through her. This was Ben, the real Ben, and_ he loved her_.

They looked at one another for another moment, and then she asked, "You know where we are?"

His eyes darted around them, as if to confirm. He nodded. "Yeah."

"Then do you think you can get us out?"

He nodded again, a little less certain, and stood up. His clothes were arranged awkwardly on him where she'd been pulling at them; he shrugged them back into place and stretched a hand down to her.

She took it.


	33. Chapter 33

As Rey got to her feet, she saw Ben still looking around at the deep cavern around them. Hundreds of smooth, glassy spots dully reflected the light around them; she still wasn't quite sure where the light came from. She'd extinguished her lightsaber and returned it to her hip, but this light was much more diffuse than that. It was almost like the walls themselves let off a soft glow, and the mirrored surfaces just echoed it back. Beyond Ben, should could see images in the other mirrors, people moving silently. She did not recognize any of the scenes or people she saw, but she didn't truly care what the other scenes could be. Ben was here, somehow, right before her, real and alive.

"I shouldn't be here," he said, his words echoing in the stone chamber.

"Why not?" she demanded, and he looked at her as if he'd forgotten for a moment that she was there even as he was still holding her hand. His brows drew together as he looked at her. She couldn't quite place the mix of emotions that fought in his eyes: sadness, worry, fear, but more than that.

"I don't deserve it," he said, his voice barely a whisper now.

It was true that he'd done some terrible things. He had aligned himself with Snoke and therefore Palpatine while dark madness coiled through the galaxy. His fall had led to the deaths of his entire family. He'd killed people – but so had she. If he didn't deserve to live, then neither did she, but he'd thought she was worth any price.

She was standing so close to him that she could feel the warmth of his body and smell the scent of his skin. An incredible tenderness welled up inside her and she wanted to lean her head on his shoulder and be so close to him that his mind was hers. The thought was distracting, here as the world crumbled away around them.

Then she reached into her pocket and drew out the kyber. She held it between her fingertips so that what little light there was filled it and she thrust it toward him. Finally, he looked up at her, first at her face and then at the blue crystal, strangely heavy for its size, that she was holding out to him.

"My mother's," he said. It was not a question. She lifted it just the smallest bit higher toward him.

His fingers wrapped around the crystal, sliding over hers. The spark of desire crackled back over her from his fingers and dissipated into her body. The kyber disappeared into his hand and then into his clothes. He seemed heartened by the gift and the lines of worry finally smoothed.

"We need to go," he said to her, all at once. "You broke through and now the temple won't stand."

She didn't wait for him to explain that. It made sense, a strange, immediate kind of sense. She'd manipulated the twisting ribbon and some foundational part of the temple had been disturbed. As if in response to Ben's words, a loud crack like thunder echoed up from below them. "Gotta go," he said again, and he began to move quickly toward the upward sloping section of the floor.

He'd been here before, she realized. He didn't just figure it out based on what he'd just experienced; he actually knew where he was going as he pulled her hand along with him. She tightened her grasp and ran to keep up. He was more than a head taller than she with legs to match, and he moved with grace for someone as big as he was. Rey had to work to keep pace as they ran uphill. A shower of gravel fell from somewhere above them and Ben tugged her to the side and out of its path. She'd outrun plenty of enemies but a collapsing building of stone was a new one.

A second thunderclap echoed up from the depths. The sound bounced off the stone walls, a disorienting experience. Glassy patches on the walls glinted as they passed. A falling rock crashed into one up ahead of them; it didn't shatter like a real mirror would but cracked all the same. Belated fear gripped her throat. She'd been so focused on figuring out how to bend the ribbon that she hadn't fully realized what she was doing. Each of these was a like a portal into a separate moment and place along the ribbon.

Ben wrenched her against the wall as more rocks fell, clattering down from the ceiling. Her eyes darted upward but she couldn't see where in the heights above it had come from. She stared at the image in the glass directly across from them. It should have been a reflection of the two of them, but instead it was … herself. Alone, and young, and small. Two people bent over her, silently mouthing words to her. Her parents.

"Don't trust it," Ben said. He'd noticed what she was looking at. His voice was hushed but urgent and she blinked, uncomprehending. "This place," he was saying. "It has a will of its own. It shows you what you want to see but ..." He paused and dragged her a few feet further up the corridor. "Actions have consequences, Rey."

She could interrupt that impassioned conversation her parents had had with her younger self, but there was no way to control what happened after. She'd dragged Ben away from imminent death and now the temple was collapsing around them. Rey turned her eyes to meet his briefly, just for an instant, and she saw the intensity there. He was desperate for her to understand what he was trying to tell her: she couldn't go back. She'd done enough damage for him, and he didn't entirely approve of her methods. She looked back at the mirror that had held that precious image, but from this angle, it was just black.

And then he was pulling her again, back upwards away from the glow and into the black corridor. Ben swore, which was the first time she'd heard him do that, as the darkness became thick around them. He slowed and then stopped, afraid he might lead her over a cliff. She released his hand and drew out her saber. As she ignited it, she could see his face again, and what she saw there was surprise. He was _impressed._ The amber light was dim in the dark cavern, but it illumined the ground at their feet well enough to keep them from falling to their doom, so that seemed good enough. Ben's hand encircled hers on the hilt, and he turned it around, studying the craftsmanship with as much interest as if they were not about to crushed to death.

"Gotta go," she whispered to him, breaking the spell, and she grabbed his hand with her free one and began to pull him behind her. The man who'd been Kylo Ren accepted her leadership easily and merely tightened his fingers around hers as they ran.

Suddenly, she skidded to a halt. She spread out her arm in front of him as if she could hold him back just that easily. Fortunately Ben stopped too, but she pushed him backwards just a little for good measure. She titled the blade downward to reveal a fissure in the stone floor. It hadn't been there before, and with every moment it grew wider.

Only blackness gaped back at them. Rey didn't need to see it to feel it. Cold air rushed up from the huge crack in the stone, along with a smell of damp air and decomposition. Ben looked at the spreading crack and then up at her. He had spent more time facing down that blackness, and he stepped over the widening fissure, if not confidently then without fear. Then he stretched his arms back to her and took hold of her elbows. She did not drop the saber but leaned it away from him, wary, as he supported her. The fissure continued to open even as she went over it, and only the pull of Ben's hands on her drew her the rest of the way as her back foot slid off the edge.

He released a breath he must have been holding and then pushed her ahead of him slightly, urging her on. Rey grabbed his hand again and dragged him with her. They were getting out of here together or not at all.

The light of the entryway appeared ahead of them. They kept running as the stones falling from above grew larger and the thunder below them grew louder. Rey extinguished the lightsaber but kept it in the hand not clinging to Ben's, unwilling to take the risk of losing it by trying to hitch it back to her hip. She could feel sweat beading on the back of her neck and the pounding of each step into the hard stone. Her breath was coming in gasps, not because of the running but because of the fear. She could not lose him, not a second time. The sound of the temple falling in on itself was immense, deafening, and she almost didn't realize it when they emerged back into the sunlight, dust swirling around them.

Rey and Ben turned back to look at it. With a final, unfathomable shudder, the temple rocked and shook, and then collapsed, finally, in on itself. Ben pulled her into him and covered her head with his hand, protectively, while the pyramid fell. It was uneven, with one side crumbling first; the whole thing lurched toward the crumbled side, the part still standing seeming to rise for a moment before it too vanished into the tumble of stone and dust. It took an impressive amount of time for the whole thing to fall in, yet it was likely just a minute or two. When at last they could see the remains, there was nothing left but a huge, blacked scorch mark in the jungle.

Ben released her from his hold, from where she'd been pressed against him, and laid his hand along her cheek, peering eagerly at her as if to reassure himself that she was all right. She blinked up at him and at the sunlight, and the swirling remnant of the temple.


	34. Chapter 34

"Ossus," he said, as they stood together on the solid ground.

"You've been here before." It wasn't a question. She knew it to be true.

"With Luke," he replied with a nod, as if it were obvious. She supposed it was.

He looked around himself, at the ruined temple and the trees bedecked with birds, now returning after the turmoil of the collapse. He didn't seem to understand what had happened, how he'd gotten here. Rey thought of the moment when she'd felt him arrive on Exegol. The Emperor had said that he was the only family she had, but then – just then – she'd sensed Ben. She hadn't known where he'd come from or how he'd arrived, but he was there with her, her true family. And she'd come back for him too.

"How did you find it?" he asked her, as if echoing her thoughts. Rey remembered then too what she had done with her things. She turned and looked, for a moment unsure if the collapse of the temple had taken with it her precious items. The tree was still standing, much to her relief, and beneath the shrub her bag. She picked it up and pulled out the sacred text, its worn leather cover a bit dusty from its hiding place. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.

He turned over the book in his hands, a smile playing on the corners of his lips as if he'd caught sight of an old friend across a room. He opened it, balancing the spine in one broad hand and flipping through it with the fingers of the other, until he came to the spot he'd apparently been looking for. He picked up the slip of parchment between the pages and turned it over, skimming the words on both sides.

"Were you with him when he was working on that?" she asked, gently. She didn't need to say who she meant.

"Who?" he asked, momentarily lost in a memory. "Luke? No, no: this is _my _hand."

The beautiful, elegant hand, with looping strokes and careful precision – of course it was his. Of course it belonged to the educated, urbane prince and not the earnest farmboy. Again she wondered who Ben might have been if only things had gone differently.

As if he remembered then that they were together on Ossus and not wherever his mind had wandered to, he looked up at her, his eyes clearing from misty nostalgia.

"We should go," he said, closing the book with a snap. "The planet's not inhabited but that doesn't mean it's safe."

She gestured at the Hope, some fifty paces down the hill. "It's not much but it's got a working hyperdrive." Ben looked at it appraisingly; indeed, it was no Silencer, but beggars can't be choosers, he seemed to think, and he'd certainly known bigger hunks of junk; he turned his gaze back to her. For an instant she thought he might kiss her again. Everything about him was so intense, a constant smolder of emotion and churn of intelligence, his hazel-green eyes glittering in the sunlight. The thought of being in his arms again made her heart race and her breath catch. Instead, after an instant, he handed her back the book; she received it and slid it into her bag, and slung the bag over her shoulder. She nodded at him, ready to leave this place behind.

Ben stepped back just a little bit and Rey realized that he meant for her to lead him. She ran her eyes over him, the black knit shirt with a singed hole in the chest and covered with a layer of fine dust, his hair a mess, and his eyes seeing only her. She would not lead. Rey took his hand in hers and tugged him gently to walk beside her down the hillside. It seemed almost unreal and certainly surprising that he was here with her truly enough that she could feel even smell the scent of his skin as he walked so close beside her. Everything that was most impossible had been made real.

The gang plank of the Hope lowered obligingly when she pressed the activation button as they approached. She shrugged and urged him to enter with a motion of her head, and Ben had to duck down to fit through the doorframe. She raised the ramp and turned the lever to seal the door. She looked around the little starship, seeing its one little room with new eyes. Everything she had in the world was here, her one little bag, her few garments, and the sacred texts. In the corner stood the cargo boxes she'd only cursorily glanced into. She barely had any food left – not that there was so much as a table at which to eat. The air was cool and damp because something was leaking somewhere and she hadn't been able to find where.

Ben's face was unreadable as he looked around. She'd seen his quarters on his command ship; surely he'd be disappointed now. He touched an exposed panel of wiring, the sort of jerry-rigged jumble she couldn't even take credit for, and said, drily, "Seems safe."

Rey lifted her eyes to his, wondering if this was Ben Solo's sense of humor. It surely had been his father's. Though his mouth remained inscrutable his eyes crinkled slightly, giving away the joke. Her dear, sweet Ben: he was going to have to learn how to laugh again.

For her part, Rey let her face break into a wide grin despite the edge of nerves that threatened her. "I'll get us up then."


	35. Chapter 35

Rey coaxed her little ship into the air, her hands trembling on the controls. She'd had three months to recover from death; Ben had had barely an hour. But then, she'd had three months to live with the awful knowledge that her other half was gone, and he, just a moment. Who was in the worse shape?

A mechanical whir in the back brought her back to the ship and made her blush furiously. It was the sonic refresher; Ben was, without announcement, getting himself cleaned up. She thought again of his promise – "_Not here_" _– _and felt that strange, foreign feeling catch in her chest. Thoughts swirled in her mind, mostly of him kissing her neck, his weight pressing gently but urgently into her, and she tried to push it all aside so she could pilot the ship out of atmosphere.

She flew slowly and carefully, forcing herself to watch the monitors and keep her mind on what she was doing. Uninhabited by any sentient beings, the planet had no shields she had to pass through; there was no one to tell that they were leaving, lifting up beyond its one moon and into the open space above. When she looked down at it, she could see the scorched spot where the temple had stood. Was it worth the sacrifice? What would Luke have thought of the loss?

And then Ben opened the cockpit door and ducked his head down to enter, and she thought, _Luke would have felt it a more than fair trade. _Ben was wearing a shirt cut for a man larger than he, perhaps even a different species; it was silver-grey with a gentle sheen and a notch cut out at the throat, an embroidered band of steel and pewter wound around the neckline. The front of the shirt was tucked into a pair of onyx-colored trousers, just a hair too short; then she realized that, no, the shirt was not too large for him: it was just the same fussy style as some of the men had worn on Naboo. Ben was wearing it unaccessorized and without the long, brocaded robes over top, without the golden chains around his neck, and without his hair carefully combed and curled into elegant artifice.

He gave her a resigned look, as if to say it was all he could find, but he looked like a prince. Rey remembered that his mother had meant to be a queen on her home planet; she had never not looked regal, even at the end of her days, on Ajan Kloss, when the war had run her ragged and exhausted. He wore these clothes with the same lightness with which Leia had hers, as if he'd been born in them. And he had been; here he was, prince of Alderaan, supreme commander, Jedi knight. For the first time, she could see that he had his mother's eyes.

He pushed his long black hair out of his face. "I'll get us into open space," he said, giving her a break.

Rey went back to the cabin, realizing, as she shut the door behind her, that she couldn't even think clearly with him so close. Her heart was beating so quickly in her chest that she had to stand and recite a meditation chant to catch her breath. She opened the cargo box where Ben had clearly found his outfit, pulling out the silken fabrics one at a time. Not one item seemed right for a scavenger from Jakku. She thought again about Ben, looking so … _right_ in the same clothes she could hardly let herself touch. What would a woman wear to stand at his side? A shimmer of white caught her eye in the bottom of the box, and she drew out a simple shift, long and cool under her fingers. It was barely decorated; perhaps it was meant as the inner layer of one of those elegant outfits, like the gown she'd worn to the party. She hung it up outside the refresher and stepped inside, pulling the tawny dress Malla had made up and over her head.

She reached up to take her hair down, carefully pulling out the pins, letting the over-elegant braids and twists fall around her shoulders. Ribbons and jewels fell out of it, and she remembered why Ben had been so surprised by her appearance. She hadn't taken it down since she'd left Naboo.

She separated the metal hairpins from the wood, each in its own pile on the ledge of the refresher. She picked up the fallen ribbons and ornaments in a clump and set them on the other side of the threshold. Then she turned on the sonic stream, and let the sweat and dust pour off of her.

Clean and now a little cold, she pulled the white shift dress over her head. It flowed over her body like quicksilver, down to the middle of her calves. It was simple and maybe a bit too big, but she'd been mistaken to think it unadorned: embroidered flowers, the same shimmering white as the dress, densely encircled the wide neckline, thinning out in number the further away from her throat and down her chest. The same flowers went around the loose wrists and bottom hem. Some being had spent a month or more making a garment meant to be hidden underneath several more layers of ever-more-beautiful fabric. Rey's nut-brown hair, grown long and thick with so much care, hung almost to her waist when she pulled it out from under the dress.

As she did so, she felt the ship lurch to a stop. The tight, trembling feeling returned: fear, excitement … desire. Ben opened the door back to the tiny main room and entered. He didn't meet her eyes as he bent to pass under the doorframe and stood, tall and beautiful. Once, she thought she hated him; once she would have been afraid to be so close to him, with no weapon in her hand; once he'd been a terrifying presence – a monster, then a mystery, and now – now her breath caught and her heart pounded to look at him, her hands trembling, but not in fear. He took a step toward her, and she heard his promise again in her memory, "_Not here,"_ which meant Yes somewhere else. Here.

And then he swallowed her up in his arms, more quickly than she could respond; she made a soft sound, unsure, and he pressed his mouth to hers as if to catch it. There was nothing, nothing beyond the two of them. A thousand unspoken promises flowed around them, almost tangible.

"You saved me," he said between kisses, wonderingly, his fingers in her hair.

"You saved me first," she replied. He didn't respond, but pressed his forehead against hers. She realized, as if his thoughts were her own, that he didn't mean Ossus – or not only Ossus, but the ocean moon of Endor, where she'd plunged his own lightsaber into his chest. She hated the thought of it, of the pain, but his memory wasn't of that pain but of the healing that followed it. She had _stabbed him_ and he'd only adored her for it. Rey's fingers found the hem of his shirt and lifted it over his head. She dropped it behind her and felt the satin flutter against her back as it fell. She ran her hand over him, over the place where the wound should have been. There should have been a scar – he should have been _dead _– but there was just his own smooth skin beneath her touch.

He was looking at her, she realized: looking at her while she examined him. The soft curtain of black curls fell over his forehead, a disobedient strand with a mind of its own. The scar over his eye was gone too, she realized, just then. She hadn't noticed it before, she'd been so focused on getting out in one piece, but now she reached up and moved the hair away, just to be sure. The scar she'd given him that night on Starkiller Base, with the snow falling all around – it was gone. She traced where it should have been with one finger, over his eyebrow and down his cheek. He closed his eyes at her touch, enjoying the soft caress, and she kissed him again.

It was, for she couldn't think of any other way to think of it, like coming home. _This _was home, Ben's arms around her, holding her close to him, two halves of a whole. Her entire life, every moment she hadn't been here with him, had been wasted: every second she wasn't beside him, pointless. _This _was all she'd ever wanted.

"You don't need this," he said, running his hand down her arm over the smooth satin and flawless embroidery. She didn't need to be a princess, a porcelain doll in fine gowns, her hair in perfect artifice, her face painted and nails polished. He'd seen her rage and fire, her tears, her childlike joy, and he held her close all the same. She closed her eyes – it was all too much to bear at once – and felt her heart beating hard. Sweetest terror.

"Take it off me then."

He startled, just slightly, against her, as if he hadn't expected her to say that. Even as he stood there half-naked himself. It was funny, really, that a man who wanted to seem so self-possessed could be so –

With one hand, Ben slipped the neckline of the shift over one shoulder and then the other, so that it slid down her body, catching on her elbows. She had just a moment to consider it before he slid his fingers down her arms, making her shiver, and the dress fell the rest of the way to the floor. She released the breath she was holding in, and when she opened her eyes, she saw him standing back, just a bit, his eyes lowered, looking at her all over. She should have been embarrassed, should have blushed, should have tried to cover herself, but when his eyes met hers again, she could only feel that strange, warm sense of happiness again that _he _was here with her for this.

And then he stepped forward, catching her up in his arms again, pressing her backwards to the little bed. He nearly lifted her up as she kicked to get loose of her dress, now a puddle on the floor, forgotten. The cot was too small for two, but neither of them seemed to mind the closeness it forced. She lay back against the blankets, Ben above her, all warmth and most welcome heaviness. She wrapped her legs around him and he ran his hands all over her, finding her breasts, her hips, between. Rey felt a little shock as he touched her there; when she looked into his face, there was, not fear, but concern, as if he worried he might hurt her. It didn't hurt, though – his hands were soft and his touch kind, wondering, awed, as if he couldn't believe any of it was happening. Neither could she.

Rey found the lacings of his trousers. They were loosely and incompletely tied, as if he hadn't intended them to stay on for long. That made her laugh just a little into his shoulder, and he laughed too at having been found out. He wriggled out of them, and then they were both entirely bare.

He pressed himself into her, hard and eager, but stopped. Rey opened her eyes and scoured his face; had she done something wrong? She was suddenly desperate to have him inside her, could hardly bear the anticipation. "Ben?"

"I've never," he whispered. The man who'd been Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, was a maid. It almost made her laugh out loud.

"Me either," she whispered back. "Go slow," and with her hand guided him into her. For a moment, his eyes shut almost as if he were in pain. As for her, she felt wonderful: he slid into her easily, fully. She hadn't been prepared for the intimacy of it, to have him that close, but it seemed right. Her entire life, they'd been bound together without ever knowing it, and since they'd met everything was different. Talking with him was like talking to herself. He was already the person closest to her. It was terrifying, and thrilling, and … wonderful.

Ben opened his eyes again and moved inside her, and that felt even better. Light was creeping through the little chamber, curling around them like a being of its own; a cool, blue light, gentle as smoke, seeping as through a crack in a wall, like purple dawn on clouds. "Are you doing that?" he asked when he realized.

She shook her head. It was neither of them, and both of them. And when he kissed her, it was perfect.


	36. Epilogue

She woke on the cot, Ben's arm stretched out along its edge with his fingers resting quietly by her lips. She followed the arm with her eyes to his shoulder, to see him sitting on the floor, folded up inside a blanket, one of her books in his lap. He turned when he realized she was awake; his gaze went right through her like a bolt, and a slight, soft smile curled on his face. She thought again that he had the sweetest smile she'd ever seen.

He turned over onto his knees to look at her more fully, and he rested his chin on his upper arm, the book closed and forgotten on the floor. "Where should we go?" he asked, softly, as if she were the one who decided, the captain of his ship.

The answer was one she hadn't thought about before, but as the words left her, she realized it had been inside her since she'd left Naboo. "We can't go back. Someone will know you, and the two of us together …" She remembered how the Rookaroo had recognized her those months ago; the two of them, she and Ben, must virtually _glow_ to anyone even somewhat Force-sensitive. They wouldn't be safe from eventual attack, no matter how well they could defend themselves. "Wild Space. The Unknown regions."

Ben nodded, suddenly solemn. She was right, of course, and who knew what might wait there for the two of them? Nothing lay behind them, not for Ben and not for her as long as she was with him – and she would never again let go of his hand. Belonging was ahead. "We'll chart a course," he said. "See what comes."

It didn't matter, of course. They'd each faced death; the only thing worse was a galaxy without the other in it. Rey grinned at him, stupidly, bafflingly, mawkishly in love.

He stood then, the blanket sliding off his shoulders. He was entirely nude, his utter lack of self-consciousness hilariously incongruent. She stretched her arms up to him, and he climbed, perfectly happy, into them.

THE END

**Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end! Please leave a review and let me know what you thought!**


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